Tracing the roles of soft law in human rights / edited by Stéphanie Lagoutte, Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen and John Cerone.

Format
Book
Language
English
Εdition
First edition.
Published/​Created
  • Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2016.
  • ©2016
Description
xii, 339 pages ; 24 cm

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    Summary note
    Soft law increasingly shapes and impacts the content of international law in multiple ways, from being a first step in a norm-making process to providing detailed rules and technical standards required for the interpretation and the implementation of treaties. This is especially true in the area of human rights. While relatively few human rights treaties have been adopted at the UN level in the last two decades, the number of declarations, resolutions, conclusions, and principles has grown significantly. In some areas, soft law has come to fill a void in the absence of treaty law, exerting a degree of normative force exceeding its non-binding character. In others areas, soft law has become a battleground for interpretative struggles to expand and limit human rights protection in the context of existing regimes. Despite these developments, little attention has been paid to soft law within human rights legal scholarship. Building on a thorough analysis of relevant case studies, this volume systematically explores the roles of soft law in both established and emerging human rights regimes. The book argues that a better understanding of how soft law shapes and affects different branches of international human rights law not only provides a more dynamic picture of the current state of international human rights, but also helps to unsettle and critically question certain political and doctrinal beliefs. Following introductory chapters that lay out the general conceptual framework, the book is divided in two parts. The first part focuses on cases that examine the role of soft law within human rights regimes where there are established hard law standards, its progressive and regressive effects, and the role that different actors play in the incubation process. The second part focuses on the role of soft law in emerging areas of international law where there is no substantial treaty codification of norms. These chapters examine the relationship between soft and hard law, the role of different actors in formulating new soft law, and the potential for eventual codification.
    Notes
    "Some of the contributions were presented at the 2014 Association of Human Rights Institutes Research Conference in Copenhagen"--Preface.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 321-328) and index.
    Contents
    • A taxonomy of soft law : stipulating a definition / John Cerone
    • Interpreting international human rights standards : treaty body general comments as chisel or a hammer / Kasey L. McCall-Smith
    • The role and impact of soft law on the emergence of the prohibition of violence against women within the context of the CEDAW / Ekaterina Yahyaoui Krivenko
    • Soft law, doctrinal development, and the general comments of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights / Mátyás Bódig
    • The role and use of soft law instruments in the African human rights system / Debra Long and Rachel Murray
    • The Copenhagen process some reflections concerning soft law / Bruce 'Ossie' Oswald
    • The use of soft law in regulating armed conflict : from jus in bello to 'soft law in bello'? / Peter Vedel Kessing
    • Addressing and resolving internal displacement : reflections on a soft law 'success story' / Megan Bradley and Angela Sherwood
    • The role of soft law in the progressive development of indigenous peoples' rights / Felipe Gómez Isa
    • Could the progressive 'hardening' of human rights soft law impair its further expansion? : insights from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples / Léticia Villeneuve
    • The UN guiding principles on business and human rights : a confusing 'smart mix' of soft and hard international human rights law / Stéphanie Lagoutte
    • Mission creeps : the (unintended) re-enforcement of the actors' discussion in international law throught expansion of soft law instruments in the business and human rights nexus / Christoph Good
    • Soft law within participation rights : tools in development / Anette Faye Jacobsen
    • The role of soft law in minority rights protection and diversity management : reflections from practice / Sally Holt, Zdenka Machnyikova, and John Packer.
    ISBN
    • 0198791402
    • 9780198791409
    LCCN
    2016957536
    OCLC
    949749741
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