Human Rights
HUMAN RIGHTS
We will deal with each of these in turn, with reference to international legal instruments and bodies. We will observe first of all how the rights of individuals, although falling outside the province of international law as it was conceived in the1600s, began to seep into the framework of international legal rules over the centuries, eventually coming to prominence during the 'human rights era' that followed the end of the Second World War. We will consider secondly the various mechanisms that have been put in place by the international community in order to deal with the enforcement and observance of individual rights enshrined in international legal instruments. Lastly, we will critically assess the claim that questions about individual rights should be the sole concern of domestic legal systems.
The scholars who laid the intellectual foundations of international law in the Western world, like Hugo Grotius (1625) and John Locke (1690), all stressed in their writings that legal systems, be they domestic or international, were founded in natural law and commonly accepted standards of (Christian) morality. It may seem surprising, therefore, that for centuries the rights of individuals played no significant role in the framework of international law. International law, as the name suggests, was the body of legal rules governing the relations between states - 'the law of nations'. Nation states, and not individuals, were the 'subjects' of international law. The behavior of a state towards individuals within its own territorial boundaries was governed by its domestic legal system. Any interference by one state in the internal affairs of another, for whatever reason, was viewed as a violation of state sovereignty, and as a threat to stability in international relations.
It did not take long for international law to begin to concern itself with the welfare of individual human beings. However, when this did start to occur it was not because human
We will deal with each of these in turn, with reference to international legal instruments and bodies. We will observe first of all how the rights of individuals, although falling outside the province of international law as it was conceived in the1600s, began to seep into the framework of international legal rules over the centuries, eventually coming to prominence during the 'human rights era' that followed the end of the Second World War. We will consider secondly the various mechanisms that have been put in place by the international community in order to deal with the enforcement and observance of individual rights enshrined in international legal instruments. Lastly, we will critically assess the claim that questions about individual rights should be the sole concern of domestic legal systems.
The scholars who laid the intellectual foundations of international law in the Western world, like Hugo Grotius (1625) and John Locke (1690), all stressed in their writings that legal systems, be they domestic or international, were founded in natural law and commonly accepted standards of (Christian) morality. It may seem surprising, therefore, that for centuries the rights of individuals played no significant role in the framework of international law. International law, as the name suggests, was the body of legal rules governing the relations between states - 'the law of nations'. Nation states, and not individuals, were the 'subjects' of international law. The behavior of a state towards individuals within its own territorial boundaries was governed by its domestic legal system. Any interference by one state in the internal affairs of another, for whatever reason, was viewed as a violation of state sovereignty, and as a threat to stability in international relations.
It did not take long for international law to begin to concern itself with the welfare of individual human beings. However, when this did start to occur it was not because human