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...

Abstract will be provided by author.Two big assumptions fuel current mobilization against and policy discussions about the U.S. war on terror and its implications for human rights and international cooperation. First, terrorism creates strong pressures on governments — especially democracies...

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...

Looking at a random sample of international agreements across the issues areas of economics, environment, human rights, and security, it is striking that human rights agreements (HRAs) are significantly more likely to be imprecise than agreements in any other issue area. Is that because HRAs are...

While International Relations has for a long time been informed by state-centric approaches, processes of globalization, the emergence of transnational actors and their increased cross-border activities have contributed to a disciplinary opening in terms of which actors are considered to be...

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...

As more states either allow same-sex marriages or recognize those contracted elsewhere, as in New York State, a possible clash between those who want their civil rights to marry respected and those who believe their religious convictions take precedence over their obligation to serve the public...