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.

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.