Who Believes in Human Rights?: Reflections on the European Convention (Law in Context)

Dembour, Marie-Bénédicte

ISBN 10: 0521683076 / ISBN 13: 9780521683074

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2006

About this Item

Seller Inventory # E-9780521683074-2-2

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Who Believes in Human Rights?: Reflections on the European Convention (Law in Context)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521683076
• ISBN 13: 9780521683074
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Very good

About this title

Synopsis

Many people believe passionately in human rights. Others - Bentham, Marx, cultural relativists and some feminists amongst them - dismiss the concept of human rights as practically and conceptually inadequate. This book reviews these classical critiques and shows how their insights are reflected in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. At one level an original, accessible and insightful legal commentary on the European Convention, this book is also a groundbreaking work of theory which challenges human rights orthodoxy. Its novel identification of four human rights schools proposes that we alternatively conceive of these rights as given (natural school), agreed upon (deliberative school), fought for (protest school) and talked about (discourse school). Which of these concepts we adopt is determined by particular ways in which we believe, or do not believe, in human rights.

About the Author

Senior Lecturer in Law at the Sussex Law School, University of Sussex.