Sovereignty of Human Rights

The Sovereignty of Human Rights advances a legal theory of international human rights that defines their nature and purpose in relation to the structure and operation of international law. Professor Macklem argues that the mission of international human rights law is to mitigate adverse consequences produced by the international legal deployment of sovereignty to structure global politics into an international legal order. The book contrasts this legalconception of international human rights with moral conceptions that conceive of human rights as instruments that protect universal features of what it means to be a human being. The book also takes issue with political conceptions of international human rights that focus on the function or role that human rightsplays in global political discourse. It demonstrates that human rights traditionally thought to lie at the margins of international human rights law - minority rights, indigenous rights, the right of self-determination, social rights, labor rights, and the right to development - are central to the normative architecture of the field.

Macklem offers his readers a well-articulated argument that advances discourse on the subject. He also gives them a fascinating, in-depth review of the origination of workers rights, minority and indigenous rights, the right of self-determination and the right to development, which supports his approach., Professor Macklem's book makes a valuable contribution to the existing literature on the role of international human rights law in the international legal order... [his] argument is highly original.

Patrick Macklem is the William C. Graham Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is a recurring Visiting Professor at Central European University. In 2006-2007, he was a Senior Global Research Fellow at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. In 2007-2008, he was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey. He is the authorand editor of numerous books and articles on international human rights law, constitutional law, and indigenous peoples and the law.