Human Rights as Law, Ethics and Politics (LAW258H1F)

Human rights is a system of international legal obligations binding states, an ethical discourse linking human beings across state boundaries and a political language used to legitimize intervention. The course is designed to introduce students to human rights in these three dimensions: as international law, as a language of moral obligation between strangers and as a discourse of state power.

The course will introduce students to human rights norms and then focus on the practical policy dilemmas that arise when individuals, states, corporate actors and NGO’s use these norms to advance their agendas. The following questions will be examined in detail: when do human rights abuses justify intervention? When states fight terrorism, how do they balance human rights norms and security interests? How do corporations operating overseas reconcile commercial interests and human rights obligations? When human rights defenders seek to protect women, what respect is to be paid to local custom? What role ought human rights to play in economic development strategies?

Previous courses on human rights are not required.