International Human Rights Law: Returning to Universal Principles

This clear and compelling book challenges the reader to rethink the entire basis for human rights, providing a vastly different vision of a way forward out of our current quagmire. Mark Gibney persuasively advocates for a much broader reading of the law on state responsibility, arguing that current law misses most of the ways in which states fail to protect human rights. He also challenges the notion adopted by all states that human rights obligations extend no farther than their own territorial borders by critiquing cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, the International Court of Justice, and the European Court of Human Rights. Finally, the author takes up the issue of human rights enforcement. Under the current system, the state that carries out human rights violations is expected to enforce this law against itself! Decades of sweeping human rights violations have shown that this system of protection simply cannot work. Calling for other measures to provide victims the 'effective remedy' that international human rights law promises, Gibney sets forth a series of practical steps that would profoundly change the nature of human rights protection.

Mark Gibney is Belk Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.