Through Thin and Thick

This book explores the relationship between principles and policies within Human Rights. It will be of interest to anybody in human rights, whether a professor or student, an actor or analyst, or a concerned person from a legal, philosophical, politically scientific, sociological, historical, anthropological, or humanitarian perspective.

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The book launches with examples, concrete cases, or political confrontations to explain how to conceive the safeguards at stake. It portrays these as embodying principles requiring particular actions and the implementation of policies. For instance, free speech demands permitting seemingly offensive expression plus promoting a diverse and open public debate. The work scrutinizes specific guaranties, such as those pertaining to asylum, citizenship, abortion, due process, self-determination, or the environment. It presents them as engendering problems peculiar to them. Next, the discussion dissects how precepts, like human rights and democracy, may contingently clash despite their overall commensurability. Finally, it underscores the interconnection of negative, substantive, and national entitlements with their positive, procedural, and international counterparts. Throughout, ruminations on the following questions unfold: How may courts and governments respectively contribute to actualizing the liberties at issue? How do these bear upon social justice? How may ideologically opposed states nonetheless collaborate on them?