Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> Human Rights

In 1929, the Privy Council of Canada declared that women were "persons" under the British North America Act. Seventy years later, a similar move is afoot to establish 'constitutional personhood' for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and transgendered people. In Are We "Persons" Yet?, Kathleen A. Lahey documents the minimal extent to which human rights laws have improved the legal status of sexual minorities in Canada. She argues that, despite the significant legal progress made with the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the traditional legal definition of...

In 1929, the Privy Council of Canada declared that women were "persons" under the British North America Act. Seventy years later, a similar move is afoot to establish 'constitutional personhood' for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and transgendered people. In Are We "Persons" Yet?, Kathleen A. Lahey documents the minimal extent to which human rights laws have improved the legal status of sexual minorities in Canada. She argues that, despite the significant legal progress made with the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the traditional legal definition of...

Faith in the utility and value of legal rights forms the political common sense of our age. With its profound breadth and insight into the modern condition, Max Weber's social and political thought is widely considered to be the most influential of the era. Legal phenomena play a centre-stage role in his account of the development of the West and the rationalism of modern social arrangements.

Cary Boucock's "In the Grip of Freedom" examines the relationship between Max Weber's "Sociology of Law" and his interpretation of the structure and meaning of modern society. Weber's social and...

Darren G. Hawkins argues that steadily mounting pressure from abroad concerning human rights did, in fact, make Pinochet more vulnerable over time and helped stimulate Chile's...

The term genocide has been used to describe a wide range of events and polities, from the "final solution of the Jewish question" in Nazi Germany to Western efforts to establish birth control and abortion programs in Third World nations. It is these dimensions of genocide that the authors to this volume explore, in the context both of their historical roots and of the implications for current and future international action.

In 1999, the Guatemala truth commission issued its report on human rights violations during Guatemala's thirty-six-year civil war that ended in 1996. The commission, sponsored by the UN, estimates the conflict resulted in 200,000 deaths and disappearances. The commission holds the Guatemalan military responsible for 93 percent of the deaths.

In "The Guatemalan Military Project," Jennifer Schirmer documents the military's role in human rights violations through a series of extensive interviews striking in their brutal frankness and unique in their first-hand descriptions of the campaign...

The Origins of Justice: The Evolution of Morality, Human Rights, and Law presents a view of human origins and nature that is radically different from that of the prevailing Western paradigm. John O'Manique's view shifts the emphasis from a negative characterization, in which humans are primarily aggressive and solitary, to a more positive picture of human origins within social communities, in which empathy and mutual care are just as natural and effective as selfish, competitive behavior. Drawing from neo-Darwinian theory and research on evolution, O'Manique develops hypotheses on...

As nations throughout the world emerge from periods of human rights abuses, systematic oppression, and collective violence, truth commissions have become indispensable to political transition. Such commissions are established as temporary bodies to investigate human rights violations and patterns of violence that occurred over a specified period of time. Their goal is to document conflict--to recover the truth--as a first step toward healing.

Of the truth commissions to date, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has most effectively captured public attention...