Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abstracts
- Preface
- Editors' Note
- PART I INTERNATIONAL REGIMES THEORY: DOES LAW MATTER?
- PART II COMMITMENT AND COMPLIANCE
- PART III LEGALIZATION AND ITS LIMITS
- PART IV INTERNATIONAL LAW AND INTERNATIONAL NORMS
- PART V TREATY DESIGN AND DYNAMICS
- PART VI LAW AND LEGAL INSTITUTIONS
- PART VII OTHER SUBSTANTIVE AREAS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
- 20 Security: Scraps of Paper? Agreements and the Durability of Peace (2003)
- 21 Trade: In the Shadow of Law or Power? Consensus-Based Bargaining and Outcomes in the GATT/WTO (2002)
- 22 Money: The Legalization of International Monetary Affairs (2000)
- 23 War Crimes: Constructing an Atrocities Regime: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (2001)
- 24 Human Rights: The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe (2000)
- 25 Environment: Regime Design Matters: Intentional Oil Pollution and Treaty Compliance (1994)
- 26 Intellectual Property: The Regime Complex for Plant Genetic Resources (2004)
- References
- Index
24 - Human Rights: The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe (2000)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abstracts
- Preface
- Editors' Note
- PART I INTERNATIONAL REGIMES THEORY: DOES LAW MATTER?
- PART II COMMITMENT AND COMPLIANCE
- PART III LEGALIZATION AND ITS LIMITS
- PART IV INTERNATIONAL LAW AND INTERNATIONAL NORMS
- PART V TREATY DESIGN AND DYNAMICS
- PART VI LAW AND LEGAL INSTITUTIONS
- PART VII OTHER SUBSTANTIVE AREAS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
- 20 Security: Scraps of Paper? Agreements and the Durability of Peace (2003)
- 21 Trade: In the Shadow of Law or Power? Consensus-Based Bargaining and Outcomes in the GATT/WTO (2002)
- 22 Money: The Legalization of International Monetary Affairs (2000)
- 23 War Crimes: Constructing an Atrocities Regime: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (2001)
- 24 Human Rights: The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe (2000)
- 25 Environment: Regime Design Matters: Intentional Oil Pollution and Treaty Compliance (1994)
- 26 Intellectual Property: The Regime Complex for Plant Genetic Resources (2004)
- References
- Index
Summary
The fiftieth anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights marks an appropriate moment to reconsider the reasons why governments construct international regimes to adjudicate and enforce human rights. Such regimes include those established under the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR), the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, and the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
These arrangements differ from most other forms of institutionalized international cooperation in both their ends and their means. Unlike international institutions governing trade, monetary, environmental, or security policy, international human rights institutions are not designed primarily to regulate policy externalities arising from societal interactions across borders, but to hold governments accountable for purely internal activities. In contrast to most international regimes, moreover, human rights regimes are not generally enforced by interstate action. Although most arrangements formally empower governments to challenge one another, such challenges almost never occur. The distinctiveness of such regimes lies instead in their empowerment of individual citizens to bring suit to challenge the domestic activities of their own government. Independent courts and commissions attached to such regimes often respond to such individual claims by judging that the application of domestic rules or legislation violates international commitments, even where such legislation has been enacted and enforced through fully democratic procedures consistent with the domestic rule of law.
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- International Law and International RelationsAn International Organization Reader, pp. 622 - 652Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007