The Constitution and International Human Rights

1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 851-862 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Lillich
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
International Human ◽  
The U.S

A decade ago Professor Henkin remarked that “there has been almost no examination at all of the relation between international human rights and the American Constitutional version of human rights.” Since then he has done much to fill this gap in the literature, as has, more recently, a distinguished barrister/scholar from Great Britain. Nevertheless, it may be useful, in this symposium celebrating the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, to survey both the contribution it has made to the development of international human rights law and the extent to which the latter has influenced the evolution of U.S. constitutional law.

scholarly journals International Constitutional Law and Judicial Review of Domestic Human Rights Legislation

ICL Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-118
Author(s):  
Laura-Stella Enonchong
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
International Human ◽  
Human Rights Norms

Abstract This article discusses the idea of international human rights law as ‘constitutional law’. It applies the French concept of Le contrôle de conventionnalité des lois, to demonstrate the constitutional potentials of international human rights law in the domestic sphere. In most monist constitutional systems based on the French civilian model, international law takes precedence over acts of parliament and other domestic legislation. Due in part to that hierarchy, conventionnalité permits the courts to review domestic law for compatibility with international law. From that perspective, international human rights norms can be said to have assumed a ‘para-constitutional’ function. Using two case studies from francophone Africa, this article argues that conventionnalité has the potential to play a significant role in the domestic implementation of international human rights and ultimately contributing to a more comprehensive domestic human rights regime.

Linkages Between International Human Rights and U.S. Constitutional Law

1985 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-163
Author(s):  
Richard B. Lillich ◽  
Hurst Hannum
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
International Human

While many law schools now offer separate courses or seminars on international human rights law, the number of students exposed to such specialized study remains relatively small. Human rights law is relevant to many other segments of the law school curriculum—in particular, to courses on constitutional law and individual rights—although little scholarly attention has been devoted to date to integrating appropriate human rights issues into the “bread and butter” courses that all law students take. To begin to address this lacuna, the Procedural Aspects of International Law (PAIL) Institute has undertaken to develop a human rights component or module designed to supplement leading constitutional law course books and present methods of teaching constitutional law.

scholarly journals When Illiberals Embrace Human Rights

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 380-384
Author(s):  
Alexandra Huneeus
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Survival Strategy ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
The World ◽  
International Human

A topic motivating much research since 2016 is the turn away from international law caused by a surge in non-liberal and nationalist governments across the world. In the realm of human rights law, scholars have noted how states are now more apt to repudiate, resist, or simply ignore their human rights obligations. This essay makes a different cut into this topic. It considers not how non-liberal actors reject human rights law, but rather what happens when they embrace it. International human rights law in Latin America—often understood as a means of promoting a cosmopolitan, liberal political order—is also being harnessed toward other types of political projects. This raises the question of how necessary the link is between human rights and political liberalism: is non-liberal engagement an existential threat, or can human rights law have a thinner commitment to liberal principles than does, for example, national constitutional law? As the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR) turns fifty, this essay argues that the human rights law of the Americas is open-ended enough that it can incorporate, and has at times incorporated, non-liberal concerns and norms without losing coherence or legitimacy. Further, this may be an apt survival strategy, albeit not the only one, for the region's human rights institutions in our time.

scholarly journals Race and Rights in the Digital Age

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 339-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Powell
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Blind People ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Digital Space ◽  
International Human

This essay discusses how, despite the liberatory potential of technology, racial bias pervades the digital space. This bias creates tension with both the formal, de jure equality notion of “colorblindness” (in U.S. constitutional law) as well as the broader, substantive, de facto equality idea (in international human rights law). The essay draws on the work of Osagie Obasogie to show how blind people perceive race in the same way as sighted people, despite not being able to see race. It then uses blindness as a metaphor to explore how race is seen and not seen online, and analyzes the implications of this for human rights.

scholarly journals What Human Rights Law Could Do: Lamenting the Absence of an International Human Rights Law Approach in Boumediene & Al Odah

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 562-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona de Londras
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Strategic Decision ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Guantanamo Bay ◽  
International Human ◽  
The U.S

In December 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in its latest Guantánamo Bay cases, Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States. Interestingly, the argumentation offered in this litigation was almost exclusively domestic—international human rights law did not feature in spite of its capacity to add significantly to the weight and persuasiveness of the arguments petitioners' In respect of both the geographic scope and the content of constitutional standards, international human rights law has a well-developed body of jurisprudence that, this Article argues, ought to have been advanced by counsel for the petitioners. This Article both exposes the potentially significant international human rights law arguments that could have been advanced, and explores some possible reasons for the marginalization of this body of law. The Article concludes that this strategic decision on the part of counsel for the petitioners robbed the U.S. Supreme Court of an opportunity to assert the relevance of human rights law to the “War on Terrorism,” and to expand on the relationship between international and domestic constitutional standards and, for those reasons, is to be lamented.

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