Legislated Rights
Securing Human Rights through Legislation

Argues that legislatures are necessary for securing human rights, and opposes theories that locate that responsibility primarily with courts.

Grégoire Webber (Author), Paul Yowell (Author), Richard Ekins (Author), Maris Köpcke (Author), Bradley W. Miller (Author), Francisco J. Urbina (Author)

9781108445238, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 August 2019

0 pages, 1 b/w illus.
23 x 15.2 x 1 cm, 0.4 kg

'The central argument of this thought-provoking multi-authored book is that the liberal constitutionalist understanding of human rights - an understanding on which such rights are held against political institutions and interpreted and enforced principally by the courts - is confused and unjustifiable.' Thomas Adams, Cambridge Law Journal

The important aspects of human wellbeing outlined in human rights instruments and constitutional bills of rights can only be adequately secured as and when they are rendered the object of specific rights and corresponding duties. It is often assumed that the main responsibility for specifying the content of such genuine rights lies with courts. Legislated Rights: Securing Human Rights through Legislation argues against this assumption, by showing how legislatures can and should be at the centre of the practice of human rights. This jointly authored book explores how and why legislatures, being strategically placed within a system of positive law, can help realise human rights through modes of protection that courts cannot provide by way of judicial review.

1. Introduction: securing human rights through legislation
2. Rights and persons
3. Why it takes law to realise human rights
4. Legislation as reasoned action
5. From universal rights to legislated rights
6. How legislation aids human rights adjudication
7. Majoritarianism and pathologies of judicial review.

Subject Areas: Legislation [LNZL], Judicial review [LNDM], Legal system: general [LNA], Human rights [JPVH], Comparative politics [JPB]