Margot Salomon

please note:
on leave Michaelmas 2016 to Summer 2017

Email: m.e.salomon@lse.ac.uk
Administrative support: Anna Lisowska
Room: TW3.8.02D
Tel. 020-7955-6922

twitter: @Margot_Salomon

Margot Salomon is Associate Professor in the Law Department and the Centre for the Study of Human Rights where she directs the multidisciplinary Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy (Lab). Her research focuses on a range of issues under the broad theme of global economic justice including legal dimensions of world poverty; development and international law; and human rights and economic orthodoxy. Her scholarship explores the contribution and limits of international (human rights) law, concepts and mechanisms under conditions of globalisation with current work drawing insights from economic sociology and international political economy. At present Dr Salomon is working on a collaborative book project that investigates the international legal regimes of investment, trade, finance and human rights and their unity of purpose in so far as the worst tendencies of global capitalism find sustenance among them all.

Dr Salomon has been a consultant to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on extreme poverty and human rights (2009) and the World Bank’s Nordic Trust Fund on human rights and economics (2011); Advisor to the UN High-level Task Force on the Right to Development (2004-9); and a member of the International Law Association's Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2008-2012). In 2012 Dr Salomon was a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute. She is currently Vice-Chair of the Association of Human Rights Institutes and sits on the Editorial Board of the Edward Elgar Monograph Series on Studies in Human Rights. In 2015 she was invited by the Speaker of the Greek Parliament to provide legal advice on socio-economic rights and international conditionality.

At LSE Dr Salomon sits on the Management Committee of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights and hosts a termly cross-departmental Lab Supper Club. She is a Member of LSE's Scholars at Risk Steering Committee and its Ethics Policy Committee. During the academic year 2014-2015 she was Acting Director of the Centre. Prior to joining LSE in 2004, Dr Salomon was representative to the United Nations and to the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights of Minority Rights Group International.

She supervises PhD candidates in areas such as socio-economic rights, globalisation and law, international governance, and environmental rights, in particular conceptual and critically-engaged approaches to these subjects, and is happy to consider establishing cross-disciplinary supervisory teams. Dr Salomon convenes the LLM courses World Poverty and Human Rights and Foundations of International Human Rights Law, the Executive LLM course International Human Rights: Concepts, Law and Practice, and co-convenes the MSc Human Rights course Approaches to Human Rights. She holds a PhD in International Law from LSE, an LLM in International Human Rights Law from University College London and an MA in Comparative European Social Studies from the University of Amsterdam. Her BA was received from Concordia University in Montreal.
 

Research Interests

Poverty, inequality, development and the law of international cooperation; legal rights, dispossession and the global economy; economic self-determination.

Other interests: socio-economic and development rights; the rights of indigenous peoples; land rights; UN; international financial institutions; European Union; environmental justice

   
External Activities

  • Work on Greece, debt, austerity and human rights including legal advice to the Speaker of the Greek Parliament

  • Editorial Board, Edward Elgar Monograph Series on Studies in Human Rights (2014-present).

  • Guest Editor, Global Policy Journal. Special Section on International Law, Human Rights, and the Global Economy: Innovations and Expectations for the 21st Century (2012).

  • Lead author, World Bank Study on the Integration of Human Rights in Development Policies and Programs and its Economic Impact and Implications (Part 1: Human Rights and Economics: Tensions, Synergies and Ways Forward) (2012).

  • Drafting Committee, Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (2009-2011).

  • Vice-Chair, Association of Human Rights Institutes (2009-present).

  • Advisory Board, Centre for Law and Cosmopolitan Values, University of Antwerp (2009-present).

  • Expert Consultant, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights:

    • Background Paper on the views of States and other Stakeholders/Conference Rapporteur/Final Report (Technical Review), Draft Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, (2009).  (P5) [click here for full text]

    • UN Social Forum, Human Rights and the Global Economy (2009).

    • UN High-Level Task Force on the Right to Development (2004-2009).

  • Editorial Board, European Yearbook of Human Rights (2009-present).

  • Associate, Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, LSE (2008-present).

  • Senior Consultant, Ford Foundation, Darfur Initiative Evaluation (2008).

  • Association of Human Rights Institutes:

    • Member, Working Group on the UN Human Rights Monitoring Machinery. Research Project on the Role of the EU in UN Human Rights Reform (2008-2012).  

    • Member, Working Group on Human Rights and Development. Research Project on Human Rights, Peace and Security in EU Foreign Policy (2005-2008). 

  • Member, Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, International Law Association (2008-2012).

  • Visiting Lecturer, UN University, Tokyo (2006).

 
Books  

Global Responsibility for Human Rights : World Poverty and the Development of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2007)

Challenges to the exercise of the basic socio-economic rights of half the global population give rise to some of the most pressing issues today. This timely book focuses on world poverty, providing a systematic exposition of the evolving legal responsibility of the international community of states to cooperate in addressing the structural obstacles that contribute to this injustice. This book analyzes the approach, contribution, and current limitations of the international law of human rights to the manifestations of world poverty, inviting the reader to rethink human rights, and, in particular, the framing of responsibilities that are essential to their contemporary protection

click here for publisher's flyer

Reviews:

The Cambridge Law Journal 2008 Vol. 67 (3) pp 656-658

European Journal of International Law 2009 20 (3) 922-923

Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 2009 29 (4) 827-847

Public Law 2009 (Oct) 866-869  [LSE LOGIN]

‘Margot E. Salomon, Arne Tostensen and Wouter Vandenhole (eds), Casting the Net Wider: Human Rights, Development and New Duty-Bearers (Intersentia, 2007).

This edited volume brings together scholars and practitioners to address the question as to whether, in our globalised world, the protection of economic, social and cultural rights in the South has or should become the duty of actors beyond the state. It explores the role of actors such as transnational business, international financial institutions, supranational organisations and influential states that are involved in or impact on human rights in developing countries. In adopting a ‘responsibilities approach’, it seeks to clarify the nature, content and scope of their contemporary duties.

click here for publisher's flyer

 
Selected articles
and chapters in books		  

'Of Austerity, Human Rights and International Institutions' 21 European Law Journal 4 (2015)

Austerity measures have led to the denial of social rights and widespread socio-economic malaise across Europe. In the case of countries subjected to conditionality imposed by international institutions, the resultant harms have highlighted a range of responsibility gaps. Two legal developments come together to expose these gaps: Greece's argument in a series of cases under the European Social Charter that it was not responsible for the impact on rights brought about by austerity measures as it was only giving effect to its other international obligations as agreed with the Troika; and the concern to emerge from the Pringle case before the European Court of Justice that European Union (EU) institutions could do outside of the EU what they could not do within the EU --disregard the Charter of Fundamental Rights. That the Commission and the European Central Bank were in time answerable to international organisations set up to provide financial support adds an additional layer of responsibility to consider. Taking Greece as a case study, this article addresses the imperative of having international institutions respect human rights.

click here for full text via Wiley [ON CAMPUS]
click here for full text via Wiley [OFF CAMPUS]
[Working paper available at [SSRN]]

'You Say You Want a Revolution: Challenges of Market Primacy for the Human Rights Project’ in W. Vandenhole (ed), Challenging Territoriality in International Human Rights Law (Routledge, 2015).

‘How to Keep Promises: Making Sense of the Duty Among Multiple States to Fulfil Socio-Economic Rights in the World’, SHARES Research Paper 53 (2014) [forthcoming in: André Nollkaemper and Dov Jacobs (eds.), Distribution of Responsibilities in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)]

(with Colin Arnott) 'Better Development Decision-making Applying International Human Rights Law to Neoclassical Ecnomics' Nordic Journal of Human Rights (2014) 32 (1) pp.44-74

This paper aims to demonstrate that a human rights-compliant normative approach offers solutions to some of the specific areas of concern for economic decision-making in the context of development, as well as for meeting the requirements of human rights. The authors, an international lawyer and economist respectively, draw on the doctrines that inform international human rights law in the area of socio-economic rights and by providing a careful construction that meets the didactic demands of a cross-disciplinary inquiry, reveal how the externally-generated ethical criteria of international human rights law provide welfare economics with the justice-centred guidance it lacks, moving it beyond the conventional premises of economic efficiency and aggregate social utility. The merits of this study transcend that of academic pursuit: most international organisations favour mainstream economics with development economists adopting the value judgments and allocation efficiency principles of neoclassical welfare economics. Integrating the normative demands of human rights into mainstream economic thinking and decision-making may thus offer international development and financial institutions insights that help set alternative norms and value judgments that can act as an integral complement to welfare economic analysis.

click here for full text

‘From NIEO to Now and the Unfinishable Story of Economic Justice’,  International and Comparative Law Quarterly (2013) 62, pp.31-54

Why have attempts to bring development aspirations to bear on international law over a period of 50 years come to far less than any reasonable person would hope? The early claims for a New International Economic Order and permanent sovereignty by developing countries over their natural resources, efforts to delineate a body of international development law, followed by the affirmation of a human right to development, were all attempts to have economic justice reflected in international law. Figures on world poverty and inequality suggest that international law accommodated no such restructuring. This article explores why it is international law has failed the poor of the world, and what interests it has served in their stead.

click here for full text

‘Deprivation, Causation and the Law of International Cooperation’ in M. Langford, W. Vandenhole, M. Scheinin and W. van Genugten (eds), Global Justice, State Duties: The Extra-Territorial Scope of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2013)

'Commentary to the Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights' Human Rights Quarterly 34 (2012) 1084–1169

'Why Should it Matter that Others Have More? - Poverty, Inequality and the Potential of International Human Rights Law', Proceedings of the Oxford University Conference on International Law and Global Justice, Review of International Studies (2011) 37 (5) pp.2137-2155

'International Human Rights Obligations in Context: Structural Obstacles and the Demands of Global Justice' in Bard A. Andreassen, Stephen P. Marks (eds.)  Development as a Human Right: Legal, Political and Economic Dimensions (2nd edn Intersentia, 2010)

‘Social Justice and Human Rights’ in A. Walker, D. Gordon et al (eds), The Peter Townsend Reader (The Policy Press, 2010).

'Poverty, Privilege and International Law: The Millennium Development Goals and the Guise of Humanitarianism', German Yearbook of International Law 51 (2008).

‘International Economic Governance and Human Rights Accountability’ in Margot E. Salomon, Arne Tostensen and Wouter Vandenhole (eds), Casting the Net Wider: Human Rights, Development and New Duty-Bearers (Intersentia, 2007).

‘Socio-Economic Rights as Minority Rights’ in Marc Weller (ed), Universal Minority Rights: A Commentary on the Jurisprudence of International Courts and Treaty Bodies (Oxford University Press, 2007).

‘International Human Rights Obligations in Context: Structural Obstacles and the Demands of Global Justice, in B-A. Andreassen and S.P. Marks (eds.), Development as a Human Right: Legal, Political and Economic Dimensions (Harvard University Press, 2006).

'Towards a Just Institutional Order: A Commentary on the First Session of the UN Task Force on the Right to Development’,  23 Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 3 (2005).

'Masking Inequality in the Name of Rights: The Examination of Fiji's State Report under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination', Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law, 1(2003)

 

Reports / Essays / Opinion Pieces

Europe’s Debt to Greece' EJIL Talk! 24.08.15

‘Die Austeritätspolitik verletzt Menschenrechte‘ Zeit Online Interview, 20.07.15

Margot E. Salomon and Olivier De Schutter, Economic Policy Conditionality, Socio-Economic Rights and International Legal Responsibility: the Case of Greece 2010-2015:
Legal Brief prepared for the Special Committee of the Hellenic Parliament on the Audit of the Greek Debt, 15 June 2015

‘Austerity, Human Rights and Europe’s Accountability Gap’, Open Democracy – Open Global Rights (March 2014).

‘Human Rights are also about Social Justice: A Reply to Aryeh Neier’, Open Democracy – Open Global Rights (July 2013)

'The Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: An Overview of Positive "Obligations to Fulfil"’ EJIL:Talk!  16 November 2012

click here for essay

‘The Future of Human Rights’, Introduction to the Special Section on International Law, Human Rights and the Global Economy: Innovations and Expectations for the 21st Century, Guest Editor M.E. Salomon, 4 Global Policy 3 (November 2012)

click here for Global Policy

(with Ian Seiderman) 'Human Rights Norms for a Globalized World: The Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights'  Special Section on International Law, Human Rights and the Global Economy: Innovations and Expectations for the 21st Century, Guest Editor M.E. Salomon, 4 Global Policy 3 (November 2012).

click here for the special edition of Global Policy

'Is there a Legal Duty to Address World Poverty?' Global Governance Programme, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Working Paper 2012/03

click here for full text

'The Ethics of Foreign Investment: Agricultural Land in Africa,' published in The Majalla, 5 August 2010

click here for full text

Global Economic Policy and Human Rights: Three Sites of Disconnection, published on Carnegie Council website, 2010

click here for full text

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and Margot E. Salomon, 'A Human Rights Analysis of the G20 Communiqué: Recent Awareness of the "Human Cost" Is Not Quite Enough', Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, 4 May 2009

click here for full text

'Legal Cosmopolitanism and the Normative Contribution of the Right to Development' in S.P. Marks (ed), Implementing the Right to Development: The Role of International Law (Harvard School of Public Health/Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2008).

click here for full text [SSRN]

click here for full text [Friedrich Ebert Stiftung]

Technical Review: Draft Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (2009).

click here for full text

‘The Significance of the Task Force on the Right to Development’, Special Report, Human Rights and Development, Guest Editors: R. Danino and J.K. Ingram, 8 Development Outreach, The World Bank, 2 (May 2006).