China's ascent is often discussed in economic or geo-strategic terms. Yet little attention is paid to the ways in which China's growing assertiveness in international relations will lead to novel challenges for human rights. Chinese foreign policy has an increasingly pronounced effect on a...

This article explores China's growing influence in global governance by examining Beijing's deepening relationship with the United Nations human rights regime in the post-Cold War era (1989-2009). For heuristic purposes, the contemporary history of China's foreign relations with the UN human...

This paper attempts to account for cross-national and cross-temporal patterns of government action on violence against women. Our theoretical approach focuses on the interaction between the mobilization of women's movements and the institutional context. But, we argue, the balance of domestic...

It is traditional to theorize about an Administration's foreign policy on human rights in terms of liberalism v. realism, with a dash of constructivism thrown in. This essay charts a different course. It notes three general benchmarks for discussing an Administration and its foreign policy on...

Since Kant the foundation of human rights has been grounded on certain features of individuals that are construed as conferring human dignity, the protection of which is the main justification for and purpose of human rights. Most often those features are subsumed under the general heading of...

In the last fifty years, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) incrementally transformed human rights in Europe. The effects and role of states in this transformation is oft debated, problematizing the degree to which national sovereignty is unwillingly diminished or conversely the...

This paper proposes a method for ranking country human rights performance that takes into account the performance of countries on a host of variables that are related to the protection of civil and political rights. The method involves two stages. The first stage employs principal component...

On June 4th 2009, President Obama gave a speech at Cairo University that sought to improve America's fractured relations with the Muslim world. While discussing contentious issues including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran's nuclear development and women's rights - including the right to...

Can a value pluralist maintain a commitment to human rights? In this paper, I argue that they can and, indeed, should do so. Value pluralism requires that we reject the notion that any single value can serve as a foundation for universal human rights. However, it also points us toward what is...