Human Rights: Where Do We Go from Here?

Abstract

'This volume was inspired by the increasing dominance of human rights in world legal and political systems'. So runs the opening sentence of the Introduction to Protecting Human Rights, a multi-national, multi-disciplinary collection of essays.' This dubious premise-it is doubtful whether the reality of human rights has been anywhere near as dominant as its rhetoric, even before the beginning of the so-called 'war on terror'-remains unchallenged throughout. Instead, Adrienne Stone's Introduction proceeds to identify the focus of the collection as 'two enduring problems for human rights theory and practice'.2 The first is the content and form of human rights; the second is how they may most effectively be implemented. The essays which follow are generally thoughtful and some are of very high quality, but they do not entirely cover the promised ground. They share the characteristic common to much writing on human rights, which suffers from an excess of philosophising and a dearth of empirically-grounded analysis. It is not that the latter is absent here, just that there is a serious imbalance. Put another way, there is a shortage of discussion about 'institutions', as opposed to concepts and theories. (There is also relatively little attention directed to 'instruments' in the sense of detailed textual analysis of specific constitutions or treaties). Nonetheless, the book grapples with large themes and merits engagement both on its own terms and as a pointer to where thinking about rights might go next. The essays which form its core address the fundamental tension between democracy in the sense of simple majority rule, and any serious attempt to protect human rights through some form of legal provision or instrument. The problem not only arises, but becomes inescapable, when the instrument for the protection of human rights takes a form which, under the constituent rules of the legal system, places those rights beyond the immediate reach of majority decision. The admirably eclectic group of contributors can draw upon their experience of four leading Anglophone jurisdictions-Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA--each of which attempts to resolve the tension very differently. (Of the