The Library
Human rights as a contested terrain : international human rights law
Tools
Tools
Tools
Saeed, Raza (2021) Human rights as a contested terrain : international human rights law. In: Wall, Illan Rua and Middleton, Freya and Shah, Sahar and CLAW, , (eds.) Critical Legal Pocketbook. Counterpress, pp. 213-222. ISBN 9781910761113
|
PDF
WRAP-Human-rights-as-a-contested-terrain-international-human-rights-law-Saeed-2021.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (282Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: https://counterpress.org.uk/publications/the-criti...
Abstract
The key to understanding human rights law critically and contextually lies, counterintuitively, outside the confines of the legal paradigm itself. That which we recognise as human rights law in the conventional sense of the term is primarily the ordered and structured layer, readily visible but covering a multitude of conceptual issues, ideological struggles, political interests, philosophical debates and histories of control and resistance. Although the contestation never really diminishes from the practice of human rights law itself, it is nonetheless difficult to understand the discourse of human rights in depth unless we recognise that human rights law is born of and situated in a ‘terrain of contestation’.
Recognising human rights as a contested terrain takes us beyond the identification of legal rights and a discussion on their sources and enforcement; rather, we are compelled to equally acknowledge that human rights discourse is chequered with clashes between notions of humanity and in/sub-humanity; between ideas of duties and rights, entitlements and obligations; it is a space where subjectivities of various kinds have been and are created, and destroyed, made dominant or hidden away across the abyssal divide. This serves as the main insight that the current introductory chapter seeks to convey, and we will return to this point again later in the course of the discussion. In order to provide a critical overview of the field, the text that follows is divided into three subsections: the first will provide a brief overview of what is meant by human rights law; the second section will return to the idea of contestation, and the final section will highlight some other key conceptual issues affecting human rights, which will then be followed by a conclusion.
| Item Type: | Book Item | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | J Political Science > JA Political science (General) J Political Science > JX International law K Law [LC] > K Law (General) K Law [Moys] > KA Jurisprudence K Law [Moys] > KC International Law |
||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Human rights, International law and human rights, International human rights courts, International law | ||||||
| Publisher: | Counterpress | ||||||
| ISBN: | 9781910761113 | ||||||
| Book Title: | Critical Legal Pocketbook | ||||||
| Editor: | Wall, Illan Rua and Middleton, Freya and Shah, Sahar and CLAW, | ||||||
| Official Date: | 16 October 2021 | ||||||
| Dates: |
|
||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 213-222 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 14 February 2023 | ||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 15 February 2023 |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year
