LAW 697LEC - International Human Rights Law

This course critically examines the norms, actors and institutions that play a role in the protection of human rights. The course includes discussion of the conceptual and historical foundations of human rights; controversial topics in comparative human rights law, such as the death penalty, hate speech, the rights to health and education, and responses to terrorism; international, regional, and national mechanisms for the interpretation, implementation, and enforcement of human rights (particularly within the United Nations and regional systems of rights protection, including international complaints procedures, periodic reporting processes, monitoring and inquiry procedures, naming and shaming tactics, indicator and benchmarking methodologies, and other incentive-based tools designed to modify state and non-state actor behavior); and specialized doctrines of human rights interpretation and balancing where rights conflict. The course includes a moot court argument before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Credits: 3