Suchergebnisse

What is international human rights law? This question is addressed in this volume as Steven Wheatley explores how different types of human rights - moral, political, and legal - should be understood and considers how the complex systems theory of human rights can help to resolve current human rights controversies.

The democratic deficit in global governance -- Democracy within and beyond the state -- The state as (democratic) self-legislator -- The constitutionalisation of international law -- Democracy in international law -- International governance by non-state actors -- A concept of (international) law -- Deliberative democracy beyond the state -- Democracy in conditions of global legal pluralism.

This work explores the contribution that international law may make to the resolution of culture conflicts - political disputes between the members of different ethno-cultural groups - in democratic States. International law recognises that persons belonging to minorities have the right to enjoy their own culture and peoples have the right to self-determination without detailing how these principles are to be put into effect. The emergence of democracy as a legal obligation of States permits the international community to concern itself with both the procedure and substance of 'democratic' decisions concerning ethno-cultural groups. Democracy is not to be understood simply as majority rule. Cultural conflicts in democratic States must be resolved in a way that is either acceptable or defensible and defeasible to all citizens, including persons belonging to ethno-cultural minorities. Democracy, Minorities and International Law examines the implications of this recognition

Abstract
This article looks to make sense of those cases where the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) changes its position on interpretation in light of the increasingly high standards being required by human rights, when the Court applies the doctrine of evolutive interpretation to the ECHR's object and purpose, as a Convention for the protection of 'human rights' (e.g. Selmouni v France). This raises two questions: What do we mean when we speak about 'human rights'? Can the demands of human rights really change over time? Looking to the insights from social ontology, we can think of human rights as a social institution, emerging with the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and evolving with changes in human rights practices. Understood this way, reliance on the increasingly high standard doctrine becomes defensible when the ECtHR judgments are consistent with the evolving practices on human rights and the moral values that underpin the UDHR.

There is a lack of agreement on the law applicable to cyber and influence operations targeting democracy, leaving a legal grey zone in which foreign powers can seemingly act with impunity. This paper examines the problem from the perspective of the non-intervention principle, exploring the legality of the hacking of the ICTs used in elections, as well as fake news and disinformation campaigns. To do this, we need to explain how these can be categorized as 'coercive', following the conclusion of the International Court of Justice, in the Nicaragua case, that 'Intervention is wrongful when it uses methods of coercion'. The analysis shows that coercion describes a situation in which (1) a foreign power wants the target state to do something, and wants to be certain this will happen; (2) the foreign power then takes some action, either by issuing a coercive threat, using coercive force, or engaging in coercive manipulation; and (3) the target state then does that something. Applied to the problem of cyber and influence operations targeting democracy, we can see that the hacking of elections is always coercive, because the objective is to get the target state to do something it would not otherwise do. This is also true of fake news operations designed to get the electorate to vote differently, and disinformation campaigns intended to cause policy paralysis or manipulate the views of the population so they come to align with the interests of the outside power. By explaining the meaning of 'coercion', this article demonstrates how the old non-intervention rule can regulate the new problem of cyber and influence operations targeting democracy.

Abstract:  The objective of this article is to examine the extent to which a democratic conception of legitimate political authority can be applied to global regulatory regimes. The analysis is both a response to the concerns around the putative 'democratic deficit' at the domestic level that results from the globalization of governance functions and the need for global regulators to demonstrate a 'right to rule' in conditions in which it is no longer meaningful to speak about 'sovereignty' as legitimating the exercise of political power in world society. The essay draws on the work of Joseph Raz and Jürgen Habermas to develop a conceptual framework for understanding the idea of legitimate political authority – as it applies to democratic societies – before going on to consider the complexities that emerge from the recognition of multiple overlapping regimes, all of which can make a plausible claim to democratic legitimacy and a right to rule on the issue under consideration.