Consociations are power-sharing arrangements, increasingly used to manage ethno-nationalist, ethno-linguistic, and ethno-religious conflicts. Current examples include Belgium, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Burundi, and Iraq. Despite their growing popularity, they have begun to be challenged before human rights courts as being incompatible with human rights norms, particularly equality and non-discrimination.
Courts and Consociations examines the use of power-sharing agreements, their legitimacy, and their compatibility with human rights law. Key questions include to what extent, if any,...

Understanding Human Dignity aims to help the reader make sense of current debates about the meaning and implications of the idea of human dignity, a concept that has probably never been so omnipresent in everyday speech, or so deeply embedded in political and legal discourse. In many of the central debates of our time (such as those concerning torture, abortion, same-sex marriage, global justice, human rights, and welfare reform), appeals to dignity are prominently on display. The concept of dignity is not only a frequent feature of political debate, but also, and increasingly, of...