Costas Douzinas

Conor Gearty

Does the apparent victory, universality and ubiquity of the idea of rights indicate that such rights have transcended all conflicts of interests and moved beyond the presumption that it is the clash of ideas that drives culture? Or has the rhetorical triumph of rights not been replicated in reality? The contributors to this book answer these questions in the context of an increasing wealth gap between the metropolitan elites and the rest, a chasm in income and chances between the rich and the poor, and walls which divide the comfortable middle classes from the 'underclass'. Why do these inequalities persist in our supposed human rights-abiding societies? In seeking to address the foundations, genealogies, meaning and impact of rights, this book captures some of the energy, breadth, power and paradoxes that make deployment of the language of human rights such an essential but changeable part of so many of our contemporary discourses.

The Philosophy and Social Theory of Human Rights

The Meanings of Rights

David Downes

Paul Rock

Christine Chinkin

Professor of Social Administration David Downes

Professor of Social Institutions Paul Rock

The work of Stanley Cohen over four decades has come to acquire a classical status in the fields of criminology, sociology and human rights. His writing, research, teaching and practical engagement in these fields have been at once rigorously analytical and intellectually inspiring. It amounts to a unique contribution, immensely varied yet with several unifying themes, and it has made, and continues to make, a lasting impact around the world. His work thus has a protean character and scope which transcend time and place. This book of essays in Stanley Cohen's honour aims to build on and reflect some of his many-sided contributions. It contains chapters by some of the world's leading thinkers as well as the rising generation of scholars and practitioners whose approach has been shaped in significant respects by his own.

From Moral Panics to States of Denial, Essays in Honour of Stanley Cohen

Crime, Social Control and Human Rights

All aspire to liberty and security in their lives but few people truly enjoy them. This book explains why this is so. In what Conor Gearty calls our 'neo-democratic' world, the proclamation of universal liberty and security is mocked by facts on the ground: the vast inequalities in supposedly free societies, the authoritarian regimes with regular elections, and the terrible socio-economic deprivation camouflaged by cynically proclaimed commitments to human rights. Gearty's book offers an explanation of how this has come about, providing also a criticism of the present age which tolerates it. He then goes on to set out a manifesto for a better future, a place where liberty and security can be rich platforms for everyone's life. The book identifies neo-democracies as those places which play at democracy so as to disguise the injustice at their core. But it is not just the new 'democracies' that have turned 'neo', the so-called established democracies are also hurtling in the same direction, as is the United Nations. A new vision of universal freedom is urgently required. Drawing on scholarship in law, human rights and political science this book argues for just such a vision, one in which the great achievements of our democratic past are not jettisoned as easily as were the socialist ideals of the original democracy-makers.

Liberty and Security

Professor of Human Rights and Director of the Institute of Public Affairs Conor Gearty

In the 2015 UK General Election, one of the major pledges of the Conservative party was the repeal of the Human Rights Act 1998, to be replaced with a UK Bill of Rights. In this book, Professor Conor Gearty puts forth his case for keeping the Human Rights Act by dissecting the so called 'fantasies' that are driving the case for repeal. Analysing the debate through the perspective of British law, history, politics, and culture, he examines what arguments are in place for the repeal of the Act and how these can be dismissed as no more than 'English exceptionalism'. Structured in three parts, the book first exposes the myths that drive the anti-Human Rights Act argument. Second, in a counter-balance to these arguments, Gearty outlines how the Act operates in practice and what its impact really is 'on the ground'. Third, he looks to the future and the kind of Britain we want to live in, and how, for all its modesty, the survival or otherwise of the Human Rights Act will play a pivotal part in that future.

Britain, Strasbourg, and Human Rights

On Fantasy Island

In this 2006 book, Conor Gearty confronts the challenges that may destroy the language of human rights for future generations.

Can Human Rights Survive?

Captures the essence of the multi-layered subject of human rights law in a way that is authoritative, critical and scholarly.

The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights Law

Questioning some of the repetitive and narrow theoretical writings on rights, a group of leading intellectuals examine human rights from philosophical, theological, historical, literary and political perspectives.

Conor Gearty

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