The Official Police Voice

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-97
Author(s):  
Richard Martin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
High Level ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
Official Police

The task of this chapter is to trace how and why human rights law has come to be such an integral and sustained feature of the PSNI’s official narrative. The reason, this chapter argues, lies in the apparent power of human rights discourse to cool down, even if not quite neutralize, political tensions, debates and controversies that still animate ‘high-level policing’ (Brodeur, 1983) in the country. To frame this chapter’s analysis of the PSNI’s official vernacular of human rights, a ‘dialogic’ model of legitimacy is drawn upon to better account for the conditional nature of power and legitimation. Doing so enables us to better identify and account for the dynamic struggles in which rights-based claims are deployed as part of efforts to frame, or even resolve, contemporary political and public debates. By closely examining chief officers’ forewords and speeches, as well as their public responses to questions at the Policing Board’s public session, three central properties are identified that define this official vernacular. These are: human rights as legality; as an ethics of power; and as accountability. Each of these major strands of the police voice, it is argued, contribute to a purported vision of the PSNI as worthy of endorsement by elite audiences.

The Taming of the Shrill: From Indicators to Indicatorization

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-115
Author(s):  
Siobhán Airey
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Right To Development ◽  
International Economic Relations ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Right ◽  
High Level ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This article addresses the specific norm-generation function of indicators in a human rights context, focusing on ways that indicators foreground and legitimize as ‘truth’ particular worldviews or values. It describes the stakes of this process through elaborating on the concept of ‘indicatorization’, focusing on one moment in which the relationship between human rights and development was defined through indicators: the indicatorization of the Right to Development by a un High Level Task Force in 2010. In this initiative, different perspectives on human rights, equality, participation and development from within the un and the World Bank were brought together. This resulted in a subtle but significant re-articulation of ideas contained in the 1986 un Declaration on the Right to Development. The article argues that how indicatorization happens, matters, and has important implications for the potential role of human rights discourse within international economic relations.

Contesting Austerity in the 1970s and 1980s

2021 ◽  
pp. 297-316
Author(s):  
Matthias Goldmann
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
The Status ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

While human rights discourse became fundamental for challenging austerity in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, in historical perspective, such a role of human rights represents the exception rather than the rule. Human rights discourse in the context of sovereign debt-induced austerity has varied enormously over time. Far from reflecting progress, its history reveals changing paradigms of human rights law. This chapter focuses on one of these paradigm shifts occurring at the turn from the 1970s to the 1980s. In the 1970s, newly independent states invoked human rights mostly to assert their sovereignty and avert international interference. This structural human rights paradigm abruptly disappeared from austerity debates in the 1980s, when the sovereign debt crisis hit the Global South, creating a need for multilateral liquidity assistance. Faced with pressure to reconsider the social impact of structural adjustment programmes, the International Monetary Fund shifted the terms of the debate from ‘human needs’, a human rights-related term, to ‘human capital’. Consequently, at the time when human rights rose to the status of the ‘last utopia’, they ceased to have relevance for austerity. Hence, whether human rights discourse promotes social ends depends on the particular context and time. The chapter ends by proposing a political paradigm of human rights law reflecting this insight.

Ethnocultural Diversity and Human Rights: Legal Categories, Claims, and the Hybridity of Group Protection

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 250-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaetano Pentassuglia
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Arctic Region ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Group Status ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Ethnocultural Diversity ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
The Impact

In this article I explore the interface between theoretical accounts of the field, the overlapping dimensions of international legal categories in framing ethnocultural claims, as well as the impact of international legal practice, particularly human rights jurisprudence, on addressing those claims both on their own merits and within the wider context of human rights law. By doing so, I seek to provide a perspective on ethnocultural diversity in human rights discourse that is less concerned with issues of group status and right-holding and more interested in capturing complex overarching dimensions surrounding the field. I argue that looking at the nature and structure of claims is as important as discussing how to maximise protection for tightly construed classes of groups – universally and in the Arctic region. In this context, I also argue for a hybrid understanding of group protection that puts strains on rigid conceptual dichotomies between the individual and the group in human rights law.

scholarly journals The victim and the criminal process: an analysis of recent trends in regional and international tribunals

Legal Studies ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Doak
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Clear Trend ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
European Court ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
International Tribunals ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This paper examines the recent trends in regional and international tribunals that relate to the position of the victim in the criminal process. Recent decisions in both the European Court of Human Rights and other international tribunals have illustrated a new and progressive attitude towards the role of the crime victim. This can be attributed, in part, to the breakdown of the public/private divide in human rights law and the mutually expanding parameters of both human rights discourse and criminal law. It is argued here that cross-fertilisation between these disciplines, which is widely evident in current policy making and judicial decision-making, has meant that the traditional failures of human rights law and the criminal law to protect victims are being addressed – at least to some extent. A line of European and international case law has developed which suggests that victims of crime have acquired a number of enforceable substantive rights, similar to those held by victims of abuse of power. While the potential for victims to be further empowered will always be inherently limited in adversarial jurisdictions, it is none the less a welcome development that a clear trend is emerging which indicates that international policy makers and tribunals are viewing criminal justice issues in a much more holistic manner.

scholarly journals Exploring the Theory and Practice of the Relationship between International Human Rights Law and Domestic Actors

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-190
Author(s):  
FRANS VILJOEN
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
National Human ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The One ◽  
National Human Rights Institutions ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
The Relationship

In recent times the human rights discourse has become increasingly concerned with the relationship between domestic and international (UN and regional) human rights law. In 2007, two significant additions to this body of scholarship appeared. Although the authors of these texts are based in Canada and the United Kingdom respectively, their contributions explore the domestic–international relationship from a particularly African angle. While both works are concerned with the national arena (local activist forces and national human rights institutions respectively), the one investigates the domestic impact of international law and institutions, while the other explores the increased international impact of a particular domestic institution.

The Bible and Human Rights from a Feminist Perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 20-36
Author(s):  
Carole R. Fontaine
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Right ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This essay explores the socially restrictive traditions that cause scriptural groups to reject the idea of universal rights and equal access to economic, social and cultural rights. This hermeneutical situation is difficult to tolerate, as our multicultural planet is seeking survival. Ethical issues and the principles of a culture’s morality are often partly religious in nature. The UNDUHR recognizes the right to believe and to promote one’s own beliefs, and it considers these particular rights as being part of a cultural “right to affiliate.” Nevertheless, international human rights law has not successfully promoted full human rights in countries of “Religions of the Book.” The essay thus suggests that appeals to the Bible grounded in human rights must be woven into contextual exegetical work, human rights discourse, and feminist critique. Even so, for women, foreigners, and “Others,” the Bible will remain a serious obstacle for enjoying full economic, social, and cultural rights.

Examining the Utility of Third World Approaches to International Law for International Human Rights Law

2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-387
Author(s):  
Opeoluwa Adetoro Badaru
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
International Human ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

AbstractWith the gradual emergence of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), there arises a necessity to examine its utility as an academic endeavour, particularly within the context of international human rights law. Questions need to be asked as to what benefits – if any – the adoption of TWAIL (either as a method of inquiry or as a subject of inquiry) offers researchers in the field of human rights law. In the same vein, the time is also ripe for scholars to engage with the important question of whether there are some shortcomings that TWAIL needs to address in order for it to be of more benefit to the human rights discourse.

Memories of Universal Victimhood: The Case of Ethnic German Expellees

2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Levy ◽  
Natan Sznaider
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Cultural Events ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Specific Event ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Ethnic Germans ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

Images of German victims have become a ubiquitous feature of political debates and mass-mediated cultural events in recent years. This paper argues that changing representations of the Holocaust have served as a political cultural prism through which histories of German victimhood can be renegotiated. More specifically, we explore how the centrality of the Holocaust in Germany informs how the postwar expulsion of twelve million ethnic Germans has been remembered during the last sixty years. Most interpretations of the destruction of European Jewry and the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia and their corresponding memory cultures treat these memories as mutually exclusive manifestations of competing perceptions of national self understanding. We suggest that memories of both the Holocaust and expulsions are entwined. The Holocaust remains a specific event but also spans a universalizing human rights discourse that conceals the magnitude of the Holocaust as a particular historical occurrence; at the same time, the expulsion stops being a particular event and is being reframed as a universal evil called "ethnic cleansing." Examining recent political and public debates about how the expulsions of ethnic Germans are politicized and remembered reveals how comparisons to other incidents of state sanctioned violence and claims of singularity shape the balance of universal and particular modes of commemoration.

Transforming Human Rights through Decolonial Lens

2020 ◽  
pp. 276-303
Author(s):  
Davinia Gómez Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Empire Building ◽  
Decolonial Theory ◽  
Ideological Background ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This article problematizes the Human Rights conceptualization embodied in the International Human Rights Law corpus. It considers human rights as a Western construct rooted in a particular historical context, located in a specific ideological background and grounded in a concrete socio-cognitive system. Thus, in disregard of features of non-dominant cultures, the mainstream human rights grammar became a discourse of empire. Building on TWAIL and decolonial theory, this article challenges that hegemonic human rights discourse while providing a justification for incorporating other conceptualizations of rights through an inter-epistemic conversation with alternative world-views.

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