INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW

Course Content (General Issues)

Sources of international human rights law: international customary and jus cogens rules, treaties, acts of international organizations and soft law.

Interaction between different international legal sources and their relationship with domestic legal systems.

The interpretation of human rights international legal principles and rules, with particular regard to treaties.

Subjective scope of application of international human rights rules: entities subject to international human rights obligations and beneficiaries of human rights.

The United Nations’ system of protection of human rights, mainly the U.N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights of 1948 and the U.N. Covenants on civil and political rights and on economic, social and cultural rights of 1966.

The most relevant case-law on the protection of a few selected human rights, such as: the right to life and death penalty; the prohibition of torture, inhuman and cruel treatment; freedom of thought, conscience and religion and freedom of expression.

SHELTON D. L., Advanced Introduction to International Human Rights Law, Cheltenham-Northampton, 2020; or

Written and oral exam with evaluation based on the following criteria:

a. degree of pertinence and completeness of answers;

b. ability to correctly classify and solve legal problems;

c. ability to link with other topics in the Module program;

d. appropriate use of legal terminology.