SO424      One Unit
Approaches to Human Rights

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

This is a multi-disciplinary course that provides students with a rigorous and focused engagement with different disciplinary perspectives on the subject of human rights including philosophy, sociology and international law. It provides students with contending interpretations of human rights as an idea and practice from the different standpoints that the disciplines present and investigates the particular knowledge claims and modes of reasoning that the respective disciplines engage. The course applies the insights of international law, philosophy and sociology to understand key human rights issues such as universality, international institutions, genocide, non-discrimination, economic and social rights and citizenship.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

This course is usually delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars. There will be two hours or more of teaching each week across AT and WT. There will also be a revision session in early ST.

Presentation

Essay

Active participation in the workshops is expected and students will be asked to make a presentation to their group. Students will have an opportunity to submit a formative essay in the AT.

No one book covers the entire syllabus and students are expected to read widely from more general texts on human rights, to more specific texts outlining the debates on human rights from a particular disciplinary perspective.

Philosophy:

• Locke, J., 2018. Two Treatises of Government-Locke. Lebooks Editora.
• Douzinas, C. and Gearty, C. eds., 2014. The meanings of rights: the philosophy and social theory of human rights. Cambridge University Press.
• Esmeir, S., 2012. Juridical humanity: A colonial history. Stanford University Press.
• Pashukanis, E., 2017. The general theory of law and Marxism. Routledge.
• Crenshaw, K.W., 2013. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. In The public nature of private violence (pp. 93-118). Routledge.

Law:

• Alston, P. and Mégret, F., 2020. Introduction: appraising the United Nations human rights regime. The United Nations and Human Rights—A Critical Appraisal, 2nd ed.; Alston, P., Mégret, F., Eds, pp.2-7.
• Charlesworth, H., 2012. Law-making and sources. In The Cambridge companion to international law. Cambridge University Press.
• Knox, R., 2019. A Marxist approach to RMT v the United Kingdom. In Research Methods for International Human Rights Law (pp. 13-41). Routledge.
• Krever, T., 2013. International criminal law: An ideology critique. Leiden Journal of International Law, 26(3), pp.701-723.

Sociology:

• Bartley, T. 2018. Rules Without Rights. Land, Labor and Private Authority in the Global Economy. Oxford University Press.
• Krause, M. 2021. How NGO Practices Mediate International Human Rights. In International organizations revisited : agency and pathology in a multipolar world (267-285) edited by Dennis Dijkzeul and Dirk Salomons, Berghahn Books.
• Luft, A. 2015. “Toward a Dynamic Theory of Action at the Micro-Level of Genocide: Killing, Desistance, and Saving in 1994 Rwanda.” Sociological Theory. 33(2): 148-172.
• Roychowdhury, P. 2024. Capable Women, Incapable States. Negotiating Violence in India. Oxford University Press.

Exam (70%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period

Essay (30%, 3000 words) in May

Attendance at all classes and submission of all set coursework is required.