This comprehensive collection of leading scholarship examines the strengths of, and challenges faced by, international refugee law over its nearly century-long existence. Following an original introduction by Professor Hathaway, Volume I addresses the questions of the political and ethical reasons that states have agreed to implement refugee protection in international law; the conceptual boundaries of refugee status; and the systems and structures by which refugee rights are implemented. Volume II takes up the nature of contemporary challenges to the refugee law regime, and examines leading...

The first edition of The Law of Refugee Status (published in 1991) is generally regarded as the seminal text on interpreting the refugee definition set by the UN's 1951 Refugee Convention. Its groundbreaking analysis served as the bedrock for not only much judicial reasoning, but also for a burgeoning academic literature in law and related fields. This second edition builds on the strong critical focus and human rights orientation of the first edition, but undertakes an entirely original analysis of the jurisprudence of leading common law and select civil law states. The authors provide...