Human Rights in Times of Transition
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Human Rights in Times of Transition

Liberal Democracies and Challenges of National Security

9781789909883 Edward Elgar Publishing
Edited by Kasey McCall-Smith, School of Law, Andrea Birdsall, School of Social and Political Science and Elisenda Casanas Adam, School of Law, University of Edinburgh, UK
Publication Date: 2020 ISBN: 978 1 78990 988 3 Extent: 288 pp
This timely book explores the extent to which national security has affected the intersection between human rights and the exercise of state power. It examines how liberal democracies, long viewed as the proponents and protectors of human rights, have transformed their use of human rights on the global stage, externalizing their own internal agendas.

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Critical Acclaim
Contributors
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This timely book explores the extent to which national security has affected the intersection between human rights and the exercise of state power. It examines how liberal democracies, long viewed as the proponents and protectors of human rights, have transformed their use of human rights on the global stage, externalizing their own internal agendas.
 
Contextualizing human rights goals, structures and challenges in the immediate post-UDHR era, key chapters analyse the role that national security has played in driving competition between individual rights and rhetoric-laden, democracy-reinforcing approaches to collective rights of security. Internationally diverse authors offer evocative insights into the ways in which law is used to manipulate both intra and interstate relationships, and demonstrate the constant tensions raised by a human rights system that is fundamentally state-centric though defined by individuals’ needs and demands. Acknowledging the challenges in contemporary human rights practice, policy and discourse as features of transitional eras in human rights, this forward-thinking book identifies opportunities to correct past inadequacies and promote a stronger system for the future.
 
This is a hard-hitting and much needed study for students and scholars of human rights, security law, constitutional law and international relations more widely. Its practical dimensions will also greatly benefit practitioners in the field.
Critical Acclaim
‘The current Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in unprecedented human rights restrictions around the globe, provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on the role of “human rights in times of transition”. After a period of polarization during the Cold War, a short window of opportunity during the 1990s, the national security challenges after 9/11, and recent threats by nationalism, populism, new authoritarianism and the current public health crisis, it is high time to discuss the need for a revival of human rights to master the enormous challenges of the post-Covid-19 era.’
– Manfred Nowak, Secretary General of the Global Campus of Human Rights
Contributors
Contributors: V. Bhatt, A. Birdsall, M. Bódig, E. Casanas Adam, L. Hamid, J. Hartmann, F. Klug, K. McCall-Smith, Y. Negishi, P. Notermans, S. White
Contents
Contents:

1 Human rights, liberal democracies and challenges of
national security 1
Kasey McCall-Smith, Andrea Birdsall and
Elisenda Casanas Adam

PART I HUMAN RIGHTS TRANSITIONS –
THEORETICAL DEBATES AND DOCTRINAL
CHALLENGES
2 Key challenges to human rights in democracies at a time of
transition: Where to now? 16
Francesca Klug
3 The forgotten principle of fraternité : Re-interpreting the
last three articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 41
Yota Negishi
4 Human rights protection and state capacity: The doctrinal
implications of the statist character of international human
rights law 64
Mátyás Bódig

PART II CO-OPTION AND EJECTION OF HUMAN
RIGHTS IN LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES
5 US counterterrorism and the denial of fundamental rights
from torture to fair trial 90
Kasey McCall-Smith
6 Counterterrorism and challenges to human rights:
Justifying drones and targeted killing as acts of self-defence 116
Andrea Birdsall
7 The alleged backlash against human rights: Evidence from
Denmark and the UK 139
Jacques Hartmann and Samuel White

PART III HUMAN RIGHTS AND NATIONAL
SECURITY CHALLENGES BEYOND THE STATE
8 Surveillance measures and the exception of national
security in the case law of the European Court of
Human Rights 165
Pierre Notermans
9 Constructing a right to counterterrorism: Law, politics and
the Security Council 189
Vivek Bhatt
10 Non-state actors that aspire to be states: White spots on the
international human rights protection map? 216
Linda Hamid
11 Reflections on human rights and contemporary challenges
raised by national security discourse 242
Kasey McCall-Smith, Andrea Birdsall and
Elisenda Casanas Adam

Index 255
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