Human rights have traditionally been framed in a vertical perspective with the duties of States confined to their own citizens or residents. Interpretations of international human rights treaties tend either to ignore or downplay obligations beyond this 'territorial space'. This edited volume challenges the territorial bias of mainstream human rights law. It argues that with increased globalisation and the impact of international corporations, organisations and non-State actors, human rights law will become less relevant if it fails to adapt to changing realities in which States are no...

Virtually every constitutional order in the common law world contains a provision for executive clemency or pardon in criminal cases. This facility for legal mercy is not limited to a single place in modern legal systems, but is instead realized through various practices such as a law enforcement officer's decision to arrest, a prosecutor's decision to prosecute, and a judge's decision to convict and sentence. Doubts about legal mercy in any form as unfair, unguided, or arbitrary are as ubiquitous as the exercise of mercy itself.

This book presents a comparative analysis of...

The Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (also known as the Istanbul Convention) was adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on 7 April 2011. The Convention entered into force on 1 August 2014 and has currently been ratified by 22 states. This Convention constitutes a crucial development as regards the movement to combat gender-based violence, as it sets new legally binding standards in this area. This book provides a detailed analysis of the Convention and the potential which it holds to make an impact in relation to...

Degrading treatment is one form of harm within the right not to be subjected to torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, recognised as one of the most fundamental guarantees within international human rights law. The prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment has been interpreted as the right that reflects most clearly the human rights law ideal of protecting human dignity and as a right that permits no legitimate limitations. The European Court of Human Rights ('the Court') is internationally recognised as having been at the forefront of interpretation of the...

The protection of vulnerable groups varies under international human rights law. Depending on the group at stake, protection may be more or less advanced. In some cases, the international community has deemed it necessary to adopt conventions providing for the rights of certain vulnerable groups and establishing mechanisms to verify State compliance. Other groups have not been the focus of States standard-setting endeavours, but their protection still falls within the scope of human rights treaties of general application and the mandate of their respective monitoring bodies.

Drawing...

Under the influence of the global spread of human rights, legal disputes are increasingly framed in human rights terms. Parties to a legal dispute can often invoke human rights norms in support of their competing claims. Yet, when confronted with cases in which human rights conflict, judges face a dilemma. They have to make difficult choices between superior norms that deserve equal respect. In this high-level book, the author sets out how judges the world over could resolve conflicts between human rights. He presents an innovative legal theoretical account of such conflicts, questioning...

Children s rights law is often studied and perceived in isolation from the broader field of human rights law. This volume explores the inter-relationship between children s rights law and more general human rights law in order to see whether elements from each could successfully inform the other. Children s rights law has a number of distinctive characteristics, such as the emphasis on the best interests of the child, the use of general principles, and the inclusion of third parties (e.g. parents and other care-takers) in treaty provisions. The first part of this book questions whether...

Although human rights belong to all persons on the basis of their humanity, this book demonstrates that in the practice of international human rights law, the freedom to be non-religious or atheist does not receive the same protection as the freedom to be religious. Despite the claimed universality of freedom of religion and belief contained in article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the key assertion made is that there is a hierarchy of religion and belief, with followers of major established religions enjoying high protection and low regulation at the top,...