LAW - 725C Regional Approaches to Human Rights

(3 hrs.)

Studies the role of regional human rights protection organs (Courts and Commissions) and analyzes how these bodies function. The approach will be practice-oriented, in an attempt to familiarize prospective lawyers with how to gain access to these treaty bodies and how successfully to litigate cases before them. The course follows a comparative approach between the universal systems of protection devised at the United Nations’ machinery of human rights protection and the regional systems for the protection of human rights created in Europe, the Americas and Africa, as well as the emerging system in the ASEAN countries. There will be some analysis of proposals for improvement of the regional systems as well as of prospects for the creation of a regional system where none yet exists.