The Sovereignty of Human Rights

The Sovereignty of Human Rights advances a legal theory of international human rights that defines their nature and purpose in relation to the structure and operation of international law. Professor Macklem argues that the mission of international human rights law is to mitigate adverse consequences produced by the international legal deployment of sovereignty to structure global politics into an international legal order. The book contrasts this legal conception of international human rights with moral conceptions that conceive of human rights as instruments that protect universal features of what it means to be a human being. The book also takes issue with political conceptions of international human rights that focus on the function or role that human rights plays in global political discourse. It demonstrates that human rights traditionally thought to lie at the margins of international human rights law - minority rights, indigenous rights, the right of self-determination, social rights, labor rights, and the right to development - are central to the normative architecture of the field.

About the Author :
Patrick Macklem is the William C. Graham Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is a recurring Visiting Professor at Central European University. In 2006-2007, he was a Senior Global Research Fellow at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. In 2007-2008, he was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey. He is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on international human rights law, constitutional law, and indigenous peoples and the law including From Recognition to Reconciliation: Essays on the Constitutional Entrenchment of Aboriginal and Treaty Rights, and Indigenous Difference and the Constitution of Canada (2001) (awarded the Canadian Political Science Donald Smiley Award for the best book in 2001 on Canadian government and policy; and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences 2002 Harold Innis Prize by for the best English-language book in the social sciences).

Review :
"The lSovereignty of Human Rights is a must-read for anyone interested in international human rights law and global justice. Professor Macklem presents a highly original theory of human rights as normative legal concepts, focused on their role in the international legal system. The legal conception he offers is analytically distinct from both traditional moral and recent political conceptions. Given the expansion of international human rights law since the 1970s, Macklem's focus on their function as legal norms is illuminating and important...In short, Macklem's book forces us to rethink and revise our understanding of the effects of the ascription of international legal sovereign authority to certain political communities deemed states, and to revise our view of what constitutes a human right in the international system accordingly." --Jean L. Cohen, Nell and Herbert Singer Professor of Political Theory and Contemporary Civilization, Columbia University "This densely argued, broad-based inquiry justifies human rights from several perspectives. Macklem (Univ. of Toronto, Canada) focuses on the tension between sovereign powers vested in states and human rights belonging to individuals and groups." --C.E. Welch, University of Buffalo, lChoice "Professor Macklem's book makes a valuable contribution to the existing literature on the role of international human rights law in the international legal order... [his] argument is highly original." - Anna John, Zeitschrift f�r ausl�ndisches �ffentliches Recht und V�lkerrecht (Za�RV)