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Making human rights intelligible : an introduction to a sociology of human rights /Mikael Rask Madsen and Gert Verschraegen --State building, constitutional rights and the social construction of norms : outline for a sociology of constitutions /Chris Thornhill --Differentiation and inclusion : a neglected sociological approach to fundamental rights /Gert Verschraegen --Beyond prescription : toward a reflexive sociology of human rights /Mikael Rask Madsen --Human rights between brute fact and articulated aspiration /Paul Stenner --International human rights versus democracy promotion : on two different meanings of human rights in US foreign policy /Nicolas Guilhot --Towards a socio-legal analysis of the European Convention on Human Rights /Steven Greer --In defence of societies /Judith Blau and Alberto Moncada --From citizenship to human rights to human rights education /Francisco O. Ramirez and Rennie Moon --(Human) rights and solidarity : restructuring the national welfare space /Frederik Thuesen --Adapting locally to international health and human rights standards : an alternative theoretical framework for progressive realisation /Lesley A. Jacobs --"Legal form" and the purchase of human rights discourse in domestic policy-making : the achievement of same-sex marriage in Canada /Luke McNamara --Activating the law : exploring the legal responses of NGOs to gross rights violations /Loveday Hodson --The complexities of human rights implementation within the Costa Rican police system /Quirine Eijkman.

This book argues that European Union institutional mechanics and the EU as a political unit cannot be properly understood without taking into account the elites that make the policy decisions. Spurred by globalisation, technological and economic development has provided the backbone for social and political transformations that have changed the social structures that unite and differentiate individuals and groups in Europe and their interface with extra-European actors. These developments are not only exemplified by the rise of the EU, but also by the rise of a set of transnational Eu.

Leading scholars and practitioners cast new light on the substantial jurisprudence and ongoing political reform of the European Court of Human Rights. The analysis in this edited collection traces the development of the supranational European human rights system and provides original insights into the challenges facing the Court.

"Law and the Formation of Modern Europe explores processes of legal construction in both the national and supranational domains, and it provides an overview of the modern European legal order. In its supranational focus, it examines the sociological pressures which have given rise to European public law, the national origins of key transnational legal institutions and the elite motivations driving the formation of European law. In its national focus, it addresses legal questions and problems which have assumed importance in parallel fashion in different national societies, and which have shaped European law more indirectly. Examples of this are the post-1914 transformation of classical private law, the rise of corporatism, the legal response to the post-1945 legacy of authoritarianism, the emergence of human rights law and the growth of judicial review. This two-level sociological approach to European law results in unique insights into the dynamics of national and supranational legal formation"--

"Mainstream legal scholarship on the European Community (EC) and the European Union (EU) has long been dominated by meta-narratives and grand theories to explain European legal integration as a necessary, if not self-evident, process toward ever greater integration. The directional pull of these functional narratives, whether termed as Europeanization, federalization, or constitutionalization, is one towards an ever-closer Union, thereby replicating the original teleology of the Rome Treaty (1957). Although there are theoretical differences among these explanations, notably between intergovernmental and neo-functionalist narratives, most scholars agree that one particular institutional actor has played an outsized role: the European Court of Justice (ECJ), now the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) since the Lisbon Treaty (2009) that includes the Court of Justice, the General Court. For the same reasons, the CJEU has become a coveted object of inquiry for studies of European integration and governance. We have for years learned about its role in constitutionalizing Europe, establishing the supremacy of European law, creating a system of supranational governance, and the new types of litigation and mobilization spurred by the ECJ"--

The book takes stock of the on-going 'methodological turn' in the field of EU law scholarship. Introducing a new generation of scholars of the European Court of Justice from law, history, sociology, political science and linguistics, it provides a set of novel interdisciplinary research strategies and empirical materials for the study of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The twelve case studies included challenge the usual top-down approach to EU law and the CJEU and instead suggest a more localized and fine-grained observation of the socio-legal actors and practices involved in the making of CJEU case-law. Moving beyond mainstream legal scholarship and the established 'grand narratives' of legal integration, the volume provides a more historically-informed and sociologically-grounded account of the EU law's uneven embeddedness in Europe's economies and societies.

An innovative, interdisciplinary and far-reaching examination of the actual reality of international courts, International Court Authority challenges fundamental preconceptions about when, why, and how international courts become important and authoritative actors in national, regional, and international politics. A stellar group of scholars investigate the challenges that international courts face in transforming the formal legal authority conferred by states into an actual authority in fact that is respected by potential litigants, national actors, legal communities, and publics. Alter, Helfer, and Madsen provide a novel framework for conceptualizing international court authority that focuses on the reactions and practices of these key audiences. Eighteen scholars from the disciplines of law, political science and sociology apply this framework to study thirteen international courts operating in Africa, Latin America, and Europe, as well as on a global level. Together the contributors document and explore important and interesting variations in whether the audiences that interact with international courts around the world embrace or reject the rulings of these judicial institutions. Alter, Helfer, and Madsen's authority framework recognizes that international judges can and often do everything they 'should' do to ensure that their rulings possess the gravitas and stature that national courts enjoy. Yet even when imbued with these characteristics, the parties to the dispute, potential future litigants, and the broader set of actors that monitor and respond to the court's activities may fail to acknowledge the rulings as binding or take meaningful steps to modify their behaviour in response to them. For both specific judicial institutions, and more generally, the book documents and explains why most international courts possess de facto authority that is partial, variable, and highly dependent on a range of different audiences and contexts - and thus is highly fragile.