Reimagining Human Rights Law (LAWS90049)

The international human rights regime is under attack from many quarters. It is said to be ineffectual, hegemonic, ill-equipped for a world that is very different from that of the era in which it was devised, and reliant for its implementation upon anachronistic concepts and techniques. This subject reviews these critiques and explores their validity through a focus on two of the major components of the international regime: the system of international treaties and the system of fact-finding in response to allegations of major violations. Consideration is first given to the emerging idea of “experimentalist governance” as an approach to promoting treaty norms. Such approaches can change our understanding of the dynamics through which treaty norms have an impact in the real world. The subject then examines the ways in which the assumptions underpinning fact-finding and the techniques that are being used are being transformed through new technologies and the adoption of much more interdisciplinary approaches.

Principal topics include:

• An examination of some of the principal criticisms that have recently been directed at international human rights mechanisms by governments and other key actors
• A review of recent major critiques of the human rights regime by scholars such as Stephen Hopgood, Samuel Moyn, Eric Posner and others
• An overview of the question of evaluating impact in this field, including consideration of the work of Beth Simmons and others who have sought to measure the effect of ratification of human rights instruments
• A review of the key mechanisms used to promote the treaty obligations that states have accepted and of how these operate, with particular emphasis on the rights of women, the rights of children and the rights of persons with disabilities
• An introduction to the literature on global experimentalism which suggests a novel perspective on how transnational governing can be effective in a range of fields, including human rights practice
• Consideration of how experimentalist approaches shed important new light on the ways in which treaty norms can be translated into practice
• An overview of the rapid proliferation of international fact-finding mechanisms, particularly those used by the United Nations
• Consideration of specific challenges in fact-finding viewed through case studies such as the Central African Republic, North Korea, and the Philippines
• The impact of new technologies and more inter-disciplinary approaches to fact-finding.