Broken Cisterns

2020 ◽  
pp. 75-96
Author(s):  
Méadhbh McIvor

This chapter focuses on one aspect of Britain's contemporary legal culture: the rise of rights-based discourse. It argues that by framing their cases as conflicts of rights, the Christian Legal Centre (CLC) aims to undermine the universalism of human rights language. By constructing themselves as a marginalised counterpublic whose rights are frequently 'trumped', they hope to convince their fellow Britons that a society built upon the logic of competing rights cannot hope to deliver human flourishing. By contrast, only a society based on the foundational Truths of the Bible can achieve the utopian vision sought after by rights proponents. The chapter concludes that although the CLC has been successful in highlighting the inconsistency of human rights idealism, the use of rights-based claims to undermine a rights-based legal framework leaves them open to the charge that they are reinforcing the very system they hope to challenge.

Author(s):  
Хусейн Вахаевич Идрисов

Статья посвящена характеристике юридических категорий «права человека» и «свободы человека». В работе проводится анализ российской законодательной и международной-правовой базы, а также вопрос соотношения исследуемых понятий. В заключении работы делается вывод об ограниченности прав и свобод человека границами права и свобод другого человека. The article is devoted to the characteristics of the legal categories "human rights" and"human freedoms". The paper analyzes the Russian legislative and international legal framework, as well as the question of the correlation of the studied concepts. In conclusion, the paper concludes that human rights and freedoms are limited by the boundaries of the rights and freedoms of another person.


Author(s):  
K. K. Yeo

This chapter challenges the ‘received’ view that traces the expansion of the dominant theologies of the European and North American colonial powers and their missionaries into the Majority World. When they arrived, these Westerners found ancient Christian traditions and pre-existing spiritualities, linguistic and cultural forms, which questioned their Eurocentric presumptions, and energized new approaches to interpreting the sacred texts of Christianity. The emergence of ‘creative tensions’ in global encounters are a mechanism for expressing (D)issent against attempts to close down or normalize local Bible-reading traditions. This chapter points to the elements which establish a creative tension between indigenizing Majority World approaches to the Bible and those described in the ‘orthodox’ narrative, including: self-theologizing and communal readings; concepts of the Spirit world and human flourishing; the impact of multiple contexts, vernacular languages, sociopolitical and ethno-national identities, and power/marginalization structures; and ‘framing’ public and ecological issues.


Author(s):  
Dolores Morondo Taramundi

This chapter analyses arguments regarding conflicts of rights in the field of antidiscrimination law, which is a troublesome and less studied area of the growing literature on conflicts of rights. Through discussion of Ladele and McFarlane v. The United Kingdom, a case before the European Court of Human Rights, the chapter examines how the construction of this kind of controversy in terms of ‘competing rights’ or ‘conflicts of rights’ seems to produce paradoxical results. Assessment of these apparent difficulties leads the discussion in two different directions. On the one hand, some troubles come to light regarding the use of the conflict of rights frame itself in the field of antidiscrimination law, particularly in relation to the main technique (‘balancing of rights’) to solve them. On the other hand, some serious consequences of the conflict of rights frame on the development of the antidiscrimination theory of the ECtHR are unearthed.


Author(s):  
Jérémie Gilbert

This chapter focuses on the connection between the international legal framework governing the conservation of natural resources and human rights law. The objective is to examine the potential synergies between international environmental law and human rights when it comes to the protection of natural resources. To do so, it concentrates on three main areas of potential convergence. It first focuses on the pollution of natural resources and analyses how human rights law offers a potential platform to seek remedies for the victims of pollution. It next concentrates on the conservation of natural resources, particularly on the interconnection between protected areas, biodiversity, and human rights law. Finally, it examines the relationship between climate change and human rights law, focusing on the role that human rights law can play in the development of the current climate change adaptation and mitigation frameworks.


Author(s):  
Marina Sharpe

This book analyses the legal framework for refugee protection in Africa, including both refugee and human rights law as well as treaty and institutional elements. The regime is addressed in two parts. Part I analyses the relevant treaties: the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, and the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The latter two regional instruments are examined in depth. This includes the first fulsome account of the African Refugee Convention’s drafting, an interpretation of its unique refugee definition, and original analysis of the relationships between the three treaties. Significant attention is devoted to the systemic relationship between the international and the regional refugee treaties and to the discrete relationships of conflict and relationships of interpretation between the two refugee instruments, as well as to the relationships of conflict and of interpretation between the African Refugee Convention and African Charter. Part II focuses on the institutional architecture supporting the treaty framework. The Organization of African Unity is addressed in a historical sense, and the contemporary roles of the African Union, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the current and contemplated African human rights courts are examined. This book is the first devoted to the legal framework for refugee protection in Africa.


Author(s):  
Jens Zimmermann

Based on a comprehensive reading of his entire work, in this book Jens Zimmermann presents Bonhoeffer’s theological ethos as a Christian humanism, that is, as an understanding of the gospel rooted in apostolic and patristic writers who believed God to have renewed humanity in the incarnation. The heartbeat of Bonhoeffer’s Christianity that unifies and motivates his theological writing, his preaching, and his political convictions, including his opposition to the Nazi regime, is the conviction that Christianity as participation in the new humanity established by Christ is about becoming fully human by becoming Christlike. In eight chapters, the author details Bonhoeffer’s humanistic theology following from this incarnational starting point: a Christ-centered anthropology that shows a deep kinship with patristic Christology, a hermeneutically structured theology, an ethic focused on Christ-formation, a biblical hermeneutic centered on God’s transforming presence, and a theological politics aimed at human flourishing. In offering a comprehensive reading of his theology as Christian humanism, Zimmermann not only places Bonhoeffer in the context of the patristic and greater Christian tradition but also makes apparent the relevance of Bonhoeffer’s thought for a number of contemporary concerns: hermeneutic theory, the theological interpretation of the Bible, the relation of reason to faith, the importance of natural law, and the significance of religion for secular societies. Bonhoeffer turns out to be a Christian humanist and a modern theologian who models the deeply orthodox and yet ecumenical, expansive Christianity demanded by our time.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
B Toebes

Abstract This short presentation will note the current international legal framework and obligations.


2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 989-1007
Author(s):  
DANIELE AMOROSO

AbstractAccording to the agency paradigm enshrined by the 2001 ILC Articles on State Responsibility, private conducts are attributed to a state when they are carried out on the state's behalf or under its tight control. On closer look, this legal framework proves to be unable to deal with state involvement in human-rights violations perpetrated by powerful non-state actors, such as terrorist groups or transnational corporations. These wrongs, indeed, are often put in place with the fundamental contribution of – but not on behalf of (or under the control of) – a state, with the consequence that, under the traditional paradigm, they could not be attributed to the latter. Against this backdrop, the present paper argues that a new secondary norm has been developing that provides that private wrongs are to be imputed to a state if the latter knowingly facilitated (or otherwise co-operated in) their commission. Although international practice will be duly taken into account, the analysis will be focused mainly on US case law concerning corporate liability for international human-rights violations.


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