Human Rights Tectonics

Human Rights Tectonics: Global Dynamics of Integration and Fragmentation is a collaborative effort of internationally renowned human rights experts to analyse the effectiveness of legal protection in a highly fragmented and multi-layered human rights system.

Bringing together international, European and national perspectives and focusing on select subject areas such as non-discrimination, accommodation of cultural identity and socio-economic rights, the book examines the difficulties faced by human rights lawyers in their day-to-day work. Through the implementation of a methodology applying both theoretical inquiry and case study examples, the book analyses the impact of the fragmentation of international and regional human rights and how this can cause failures in effective legal protection or, on certain occasions, strengthen it. The imagery of plate tectonics aims to portray the extent to which human rights law is in perpetual construction and constant renewal with lines of convergence and divergence. Entangled into battles, shocks, jolts or clashes, human rights find themselves today ‘on trial’. Against this backdrop, the book addresses the case for an increased integration of human rights law, comprehensively and critically, with a focus on concrete and contemporary issues.

Emmanuelle Bribosia and Isabelle Rorive are law professors at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). They are Director of the Center for European Lawand Director of the Centre Perelman for Legal Philosophy respectively. They co-founded the Equality Law Clinic.