Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
2.0
1.3
Journals
Laws
Special Issues
Rethinking Human Rights
share announcement

Rethinking Human Rights

A special issue of Laws (ISSN 2075-471X). This special issue belongs to the section "Human Rights Issues".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2024 | Viewed by 2176

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Jason Rudall

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University, 2311 EZ Leiden, The Netherlands
Interests: public international law; human rights; international environmental law; international investment law and legal theory

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues:

In September 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt emphasized that ‘[t]he future must see the broadening of human rights throughout the world’. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which Roosevelt played a central role in drafting as Chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights and which was ultimately adopted on 10 December 1948 by the UN General Assembly. Such a milestone presents an opportunity to reflect on the progress and prospects of human rights protection. It is also evident that the world currently faces numerous inflection points that challenge traditional doctrines and approaches. To ensure that they remain effective, human rights must continually evolve to meet the needs of present generations as well as those of the future. In this Special Issue, particular emphasis is placed on social, environmental or technological changes that demand a reassessment of human rights found in the UDHR. Scholars are invited to critically appraise the current scope of and constraints around human rights protection with a view to identifying future obstacles and challenges in these three contexts. To look forward, it may also be important to look back, not least at how human rights law has overcome problems in the past. By anticipating future challenges and thinking collectively about how to resolve them, it is hoped that the UDHR will remain as relevant in 75 years’ time as it does today. After all, as Eleanor Roosevelt put it so beautifully, ‘[t]he world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now’.

Dr. Jason Rudall
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Laws is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • public international law
  • human rights
  • rights of nature
  • international environmental law
  • international economic law
  • development
  • international courts and tribunals
  • dispute settlement

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

10 pages, 175 KiB  
Article
The UDHR at 75: Analysing the Prevalence of the Use of the UDHR and Other Human Rights Treaties in the Work of the Constitutional Court of South Africa
by Angelo Dube
Laws 2024, 13(4), 50; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws13040050 - 6 Aug 2024
Viewed by 1399
Abstract
South Africa’s democracy turned 30 years old in 2024. At the same time, its constitutional order and jurisprudence marked three decades since the Interim Constitution and its successor, the 1996 Constitution, came into operation. Coincidentally, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) turned [...] Read more.
South Africa’s democracy turned 30 years old in 2024. At the same time, its constitutional order and jurisprudence marked three decades since the Interim Constitution and its successor, the 1996 Constitution, came into operation. Coincidentally, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) turned 75 years old in the previous year, 2023. The confluence of these facts is quite poignant in the context of a constitutional text that is often lauded for its commitment to the protection of human rights and the eradication of the injustices of the past, which were firmly entrenched by the segregationist policies of the apartheid regime. At the centre of this hype about South African constitutional jurisprudence is the centrality of international law to the interpretation of the Bill of Rights as well as the development of the common law, customary law, and statutory law. With the UDHR being such a central pillar in the human rights sector, this study set out to determine the extent to which the Constitutional Court of South Africa relied on the UDHR and other international instruments in carrying out the mandate set out above. The study analysed cases delivered by the Court in two separate years, spaced ten years apart. The study did not necessarily attempt to determine a correlation, but simply to use descriptive statistics to determine how often, in those two years, the Court relied on international law in general, and on the UDHR in particular, in its interpretive and legal development mandate. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Human Rights)
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-1
Back to TopTop