Mégret, Frédéric --- "International Human Rights Law Theory" [2011] ELECD 577; in Orakhelashvili, Alexander (ed), "Research Handbook on the Theory and History of International Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Theory and History of International Law

Editor(s): Orakhelashvili, Alexander

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848443549

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: International Human Rights Law Theory

Author(s): Mégret, Frédéric

Number of pages: 33

Extract:

8 International human rights law theory
Frédéric Mégret


International human rights theory is a broad term that describes a variety of foundational
and conceptual dilemmas which scholars and practitioners of international human rights
engage with. These raise fundamental issues about the nature, purpose, transformation
and direction of human rights on the global level. International human rights theory is
not human rights `in theory', a sort of utopian blueprint of what might be, but the theory
of international human rights as the set of assumptions and general understandings that
comprehensively structure the project's very daily operation.
International human rights law can be analysed here as the partly deliberate, partly
accidental fusion of three ideas: international (an environment, a political set up, an idea),
human rights (an ideological project), and law (a tool and a project). The resulting dilem-
mas are therefore simultaneously human rights, international, and legal dilemmas. Human
rights raise issues of the foundation, nature, and content of right; their transplantation
in the international arena raises issues about what it means for human rights to become
international and for the international to become more dominated by the idea of rights;
and the process of legalization of human rights internationally then creates challenges
for both human rights (which may suffer distortions) and international law (which may
come under challenge). In practice these dilemmas are often difficult to disentangle. This
chapter merely aims to give a short overview of the sort of problems they create for those
interested ...