Hurst Hannum

Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy · International Law

This essay examines whether there is a right for a group to obtain territorial autonomy within a state as a matter of contemporary international law. After an examination of relevant norms and the decisions of international human rights and other bodies, including regional commissions and court in the Western Hemisphere and Africa, the conclusion i...

This essay analyzes the international norm of freedom of expression as it applies to art, broadly understood. It notes that, like other human rights, freedom of expression in art may be balanced against other protected rights, such as privacy, or limited on the grounds of preventing hate speech, protecting public morals, or national security. Howev...

The mission of the Cross-Cultural Human Rights Review "to broaden the discourse within the field of human rights, producing stimulating research on the diverse cultural understandings and protection of human rights" is certainly welcome. It contributes to an unsettled decades-long debate over whether human rights can be thought of as truly "univers...

Cambridge Core - Human Rights - Rescuing Human Rights - by Hurst Hannum

The development of international human rights law ranks among the most significant accomplishments in international relations since 1945. However, the continuing growth of human rights is not inevitable, and increasingly expansive calls for new rights or attempts to address all social problems from a human rights perspective may, ironically, underm...

Critical review of a challenge to the continuing relevance of international human rights law

Professor Eric A. Posner is a prolific writer and the Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. From his CV, it appears that he has spent essentially his entire career in academia. This provocative book is thus primarily a philosophical, quasi-social science critique of international human rights law base...

Surpassing the Sovereign State: The Wealth, Self-Rule, and Security Advantages of Partially Independent Territories. By David A. Rezvani. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. ix, 387. Index. $99, £60. - Volume 109 Issue 2 - Hurst Hannum

Indigenous Rights under domestic law and international law United Nations.

Seminar on Ethnic Conflict and Human Rights

Human Rights UDHR United Nations

Part I of this Article recounts the international norm of self-determination from Wilsonian formulations to the present. After a brief discussion of self-determination during the era of the League of Nations, the role of the United Nations in transforming a political principle into a rule of law is considered. Particular attention is given to the c...

This article is about human rights international covenant on civil and political rights.

The ICJ’s Advisory Opinion adopted a very narrow approach to the question posed by the General Assembly, but its basic response – that Kosovo’s declaration of independence did not violate general international law – was correct. While it might have been preferable if the Court had given more guidance regarding the contemporary scope of self-determi...

Human rights conflict resolution.

Secession nationalism minority rights and sovereignty territorial integrity.

President Obama multilateralism US foreign policy human rights accountability.

Inter-American System Indigenous Rights American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Human Rights, Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Fact-Finding NGOs Human Rights, Monitoring and Investigation of Human Rights.

Minority Rights Universal Declaration of Rights United Nations.

Nationalism — the principle of homogeneous cultural units as the foundations of political life, and of the obligatory cultural unity of rulers and ruled — is indeed inscribed neither in the nature of things, nor in the hearts of men, nor in the pre-conditions of social life in general, and the contention that it is so inscribed is a falsehood which...

Self Determination Secession Conflict Resolution Yugoslavia Minority Rights.

Autonomy Secession Self Determination.

Democracy International Law

The "Troubles" in Northern Ireland represent one of the few cases of long-term emergencies accompanied by allegations of gross violations of human rights that have occurred in the context of both a functioning domestic legal system and an international system of human rights enforcement accepted by the concerned state. Despite numerous derogations...

Responsibility to protect military intervention human rights.

This book brings together two lines of enquiry in recent criticism: the reception of ancient Greece and Rome, and women as writers and readers in the 19th century. A classical education has been characterized as almost an exclusively male prerogative, but women writers had a greater imaginative engagement with classical literature than has previous...

Human Rights Obligations of Non-state Actors. By Andrew Clapham. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xxxiii, 613. Index. $110, £68, cloth; $49.95, £27.50, paper. - Volume 101 Issue 2 - Hurst Hannum

Special Procedures and Mechanisms of the Commission on Human Rights United Nations Human Rights.

While 'peace' and 'justice' advocates share ultimate goals, the short-term concerns and strategies of practitioners in the two fields may differ dramatically. The potential contradictions of pursuing peace and justice are a particular challenge in the context of large-scale conflict, whether internal or international. Both mediators and human right...

The mainstreaming of human rights into all political, development, and other initiatives by the United Nations has led to a welcome attempt to coordinate related UN activities. However, there remains a degree of mistrust or misunderstanding that negatively affects the prospects for a more effective working relationship between those UN officials wh...

A set of principled criteria for responding to claims for ethnic self-determination is long overdue. Policymakers' foremost goal should be protecting human rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been the foundation of much of the post-1945 codification of human rights, and the international legal system is replete with global and regional treaties based, in large measure, on the Declaration. Pending universal ratification of the Covenants and other treaties, it is to the Universal Declaration o...

A 3-day Meeting held in Dublin, Ireland on 26–28 May 1997 was organized by the National College of Industrial Relations of Ireland and the US-based International Center for Alcohol Policies. During this Meeting, the 24 participants representing the beverage alcohol industry, governmental organizations and the scientific and public health communitie...

A 3-day Meeting held in Dublin, Ireland on 26–28 May 1997 was organized by the National College of Industrial Relations of Ireland and the US-based International Center for Alcohol Policies. During this Meeting, the 24 participants representing the beverage alcohol industry, governmental organizations and the scientific and public health communitie...

UDHR National Law Constitutional Law Judicial Rejection of UDHR.

The introductory chapter of this book discusses how a unifying concern for human dignity led to the establishment of human rights as part of the body of international law. Next, the chapter includes excerpts from multiple writers’ works to employ slavery as a case study to demonstrate how the international community has used the notion of human rig...

This article examines the feasibility of bringing an application to the International Court of Justice, under the terms of Article IX of the Genocide Convention or Article 36 of the Statute of the Court. It concludes that such an application would be legally feasible and political desirable and that the failure of any state thus far to institute pr...

A small 3-day meeting of international lawyers and other experts was convened by the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, in November 1986 to consider the current status of the right to leave any country, including one’s own, and to return to one’s country. The approximately 30 participants were from Costa Rica, Egypt, the...

While many law schools now offer separate courses or seminars on international human rights law, the number of students exposed to such specialized study remains relatively small. Human rights law is relevant to many other segments of the law school curriculum—in particular, to courses on constitutional law and individual rights—although little sch...

“Autonomy” is not a term of art or a concept that has a generally accepted definition in international law. Indeed, one surveying either the literature on the subject or the examples brought forth to demonstrate the existence of the concept is apt to conclude, to paraphrase the late jurist John Chipman Gray, that “on no subject of international law...

This article summarizes the colloquium’s discussions and conclusions, situating them in the wider context of development and human rights law. On most occasions, the text reflects the comments of the colloquium participants; the author’s annotations and observations are generally confined to the footnoted materials. There is a brief discussion of t...

The Donnelly Case, Administrative Practice and Domestic Remedies Under the European Convention: One Step Forward and Two Steps Back - Volume 71 Issue 2 - Hurst Hannum, Kevin Boyle

The most distinctive feature of the European Convention on Human Rights is the optional procedure under Article 25, whereby an individual claiming to be a victim of a violation of one of the rights guaranteed by the Convention may present a complaint against his own (or another) government to the European Commission of Human Rights for investigatio...

The proposal calls on all concerned parties to recognize the need to compromise. It eschews a communal approach. It recommends instead a formula that offers the people of the various components of the former princely state the right to govern themselves while also maintaining their association with India and Pakistan.

Historical understanding of minorities Post 1945 definitions Recent jurisprudence and view.

New Europe Self Determination Ethno-linguistic nation building.

Private sector participation in Human Rights.