Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Tzevelekos: The Making of International Human Rights Law

Vassilis P. Tzevelekos (Univ. of Hull - Law) has posted The Making of International Human Rights Law (in Research Handbook on the Theory and Practice of International Law-­Making, C.M. Brölmann & Y. Radi eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:
The paper discusses how human rights norms are created in international law. After explaining the limits of the sources of positive international law (and especially the problems that are inherent to custom making), it turns towards the role of international courts and tribunals and discusses the ways through which these may recognise the existence of human rights. The paper identifies a number of means that are available to international courts for that task and highlights the distinction between consensus-based reasoning, and decision making based on human rights principles.