Menno T. Kamminga challenges one of the cornerstones of classic international law: the presumption that states are entitled to exercise diplomatic protection only on behalf of their own nationals. Kamminga systematically reexamines this position, arguing that if a state violates its international human rights obligations, other states are entitled to exercise full protection on behalf of the victims, regardless of their nationality.

According to Susan Deller Ross, many human rights advocates still do not see women's rights as human rights. Yet women in many countries suffer from laws, practices, customs, and cultural and religious norms that consign them to a deeply inferior status. Advocates might conceive of human rights as involving torture, extrajudicial killings, or cruel and degrading treatment all clearly in violation of international human rights and think those issues irrelevant to women. Yet is female genital mutilation, practiced on millions of young girls and even infants, not a gross violation of human...

In a turnabout of the cynical belief that might makes right, nations now see fit to issue apologies to peoples and countries they have wronged. We live in an age that seeks to establish political truth, perhaps best exemplified by the creation of truth commissions in societies seeking to emerge from dictatorial pasts. The most noteworthy result of these efforts has been the near-universal realization that a society will not be able successfully to pass into the future until it somehow deals with the horrors of its past.

A number of Western states and institutions have sought to come...