Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 2 - Advancing a Legal Definition of the Right

  • from Part I - The Concept
  • Shannonbrooke Murphy, St Thomas University
  • Book:
    The Human Right to Resist in International and Constitutional Law
    Published online:
    20 February 2025
    Print publication:
    27 February 2025, pp 15-40

  • Summary

    Responding to the lack of an agreed contemporary legal definition of the ‘human right to resist’, this chapter compares definitional treatments in ordinary construction with those in legal construction, identifying two related problems of conflation in contemporary term usage. It explains the term’s distinction from antecedent concepts such as the exceptio tyrannoctonos or exception of lawful tyrannicide, and from corroborative concepts including the lex generalis or ordinary ‘right of (peaceful) assembly’ and ‘right to protest’ in human rights law, ‘resistance movements’ in international humanitarian law, and ‘insurgent’ or ‘belligerent’ status in customary international law. It also clarifies the conceptual relationship between the ‘right to resist’ and its cognate terms – the ‘right to oppose’, ‘right to disobey’, ‘right to rebel’, and ‘right of revolution’ – identifying both points of differentiation and a ‘common core’. It finally proposes a consolidated contemporary working definition of the superordinate term ‘right to resist’.