Table of Contents

More than eight decades after the human rights regime began to emerge out of the disasters of the Second World War, human rights norms and institutions deeply inform the rhetoric, practice and theory of international law and politics, as well as the internal constitutional structures of many states. Although the frailties and shortcomings of human rights as an ideal, an ideology or practice are all too evident in 2026, the concept of human rights has become a part of modern consciousness, a lens through which to see the world and a universal if inevitably contested discourse. The course book uses the term ‘human rights regime’ to include post-1945 governmental, intergovernmental and nongovernmental institutions and practices in both national and international contexts in the recognition and protection of human rights.

Although the human rights regime now forms an indelible part of our legal, political and moral landscape, and indeed perhaps precisely because of that status, recent years have witnessed some of the deepest challenges to the foundations upon which the regime has been built. These include the growing number of illiberal democratic and authoritarian governments, the Trump Administration’s rejection of many of the premises of the international regime and the President’s explicit disavowal of the relevance of international law, the implicit rejection by key states of the UN Charter prohibition on the use of force in international relations, the difficulty of reconciling many human rights with dominant neoliberal policies, ongoing questioning of the system’s aspirations to universality, the societal transformation being driven by artificial intelligence and the existential threat posed by unchecked global warming. In response to these challenges, the book seeks to examine the regime’s failures as well as its successes, and the dilemmas involved in seeking to achieve human rights ideals across the world’s many histories and cultures.

The book aims to enable readers to see the ‘big picture’, to understand the history, doctrine and institutional structures of the regime, and above all, to think critically about the subject. The book seeks to describe, analyze, criticize and propose, by drawing from a diverse range of political, cultural, moral and geopolitical perspectives. It tries not to advocate any single dogma, direction or method for thinking about the history or the future of human rights.

The conceptual framework for the book consists, in sequence, of the historical development and character of human rights discourse and basic norms; the dilemmas of rights and duties, and of universalism and cultural relativism; the architecture of international institutions as well as their functions, powers and interplay with norms; and the interaction of states with international law and organizations as well as with each other. Certain major themes run through the different parts of the book — for example, the colonial and imperial objectives often pursued in the name of human rights, evolving notions of autonomy and sovereignty, the changing configuration of the public-private divide in human rights ordering, the escalating tensions between international human rights and national security, the growing awareness of the inseparability of human rights and respect for the rights of nature, and the striking evolution of ideas about the nature and purposes of the regime itself.

The book emphasizes the international dimensions of the human rights system, while also exploring the vital relationships between that system and states’ internal orders. It provides more than a doctrinal understanding of human rights, particularly by including materials from a range of disciplines other than law. For those who do not have any background knowledge of international law, the first two or three chapters provide an introduction to basic concepts, sources, processes and norms of that field.