Part A: Introduction to the International Human Rights Regime
Chapter 1:
Human Rights Concepts and Discourse
This introductory chapter assumes no special knowledge about the foundations or content of rights, human rights and international human rights. Rather it is meant to spur thoughts about a range of issues that later chapters examine.
The two sections of the chapter explore some fundamental questions from complementary perspectives.
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Section A involves using media reports to explore current and pressing human rights issues. In many of the relevant situations, courts are likely to have played at best a marginal role.
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In Section B, by contrast, the focus is on the way that courts from different states address and argue about alleged violations of rights. The section explores challenges to the legality of capital punishment under state laws and in light of developing international human rights law. These materials illustrate the growing attention by national courts to foreign law, whether constitutional, statutory, or judicial, to learn how other countries reason and decide about the permissibility of capital punishment (and many other issues). Those inquiries lead us to what is often described as the special situation of the United States with respect to human rights (and other fields), that involves so-called U.S. exceptionalism or unilateralism.