Reasoning Rights

This book is about judicial reasoning in human rights cases. The aim is to explore the question: how is it that notionally universal norms are reasoned by courts in such significantly different ways? What is the shape of this reasoning; which techniques are common across the transnational jurisprudence; and which are particular?
The book, comprising contributions by a team of world-leading human rights scholars, moves beyond simply addressing the institutional questions concerning courts and human rights, which often dominate discussions of this kind, seeking instead a deeper examination of the similarities and divergence of reasonings by different courts when addressing comparable human rights questions. These differences, while partly influenced by institutional concerns, cannot be attributed to them alone. This book explores the diverse and rich underlying spectrum of human rights reasoning, as a distinctive and particular form of legal reasoning, evident in the case studies across the selected jurisdictions.

Liora Lazarus is an Associate Professor in Law at the University of Oxford, Member of the Centre for Criminological Research and a Fellow of St Anne's College.


Photo by Kim Stern