Under the influence of the global spread of human rights, legal disputes are increasingly framed in human rights terms. Parties to a legal dispute can often invoke human rights norms in support of their competing claims. Yet, when confronted with cases in which human rights conflict, judges face a dilemma. They have to make difficult choices between superior norms that deserve equal respect. In this high-level book, the author sets out how judges the world over could resolve conflicts between human rights. He presents an innovative legal theoretical account of such conflicts, questioning the relevance of the influential proportionality test to their resolution. Instead, the author develops a novel resolution framework, specifically designed to tackle human rights conflicts. The book combines concerted normative theory with profound practical analysis, firmly rooting its theoretical arguments in human rights practice. Although the analysis draws primarily on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the book’s core arguments are applicable to judicial practice in general. As such, the book should be of great interest to academics, postgraduate students and legal practitioners in Europe and beyond. The book is particularly suited for use in advanced courses on legal theory, human rights law and jurisprudence.

Powerful emotion and pursuit of self-interest have many times led people to break the law with the belief that they are doing so with sound moral reasons. This study is a comprehensive philosophical and legal analysis of the gray area in which the foundations of law and morality clash. In examining the extent of the obligations owed by citizens to their government, Greenawalt concentrates on the possible existence of a single source of obligation that reaches all citizens and all laws.

Many are familiar with the concept of a moral dilemma - a situation where a person faces a choice between two mutually exclusive actions. This book considers whether situations of this kind could and should exist within the sphere of international law.

Underlying the protection of human rights in Europe is a complex network of overlapping legal systems - domestic, EU, and ECHR. This book focuses on the potential for conflict to emerge between the systems where rights overlap and interpretations in different courts begin to diverge. From the perspective of EU law, where the interpretation of rights differs national courts are asked to renounce the constitutional scope of protection in favour of the scope defined by the European Court of Justice. This work presents a theory of supranational judicial authority to confront this problem, grounded in an ideal of judicial dialogue. It represents the first attempt to provide a thorough theoretical account of the value of judicial dialogue, and its potential for legitimating judicial decision-making at a supranational level. Combining theoretical rigour with attention to the practicalities of European human rights law, the book will be accessible to a broad readership of legal theorists, EU lawyers and judges involved in building inter-judicial dialogue.

An eminent constitutional scholar reveals how our approach to rights is dividing America, and shows how we can build a better system of justice.

This book examines two moral theories of rights justification and applies them to four social issues: redistributive taxation, affirmative action, pornography, and abortion. It assesses the ethical status of several candidate social policies that continue to be debated in the public arenas.

Every human rights lawyer, at some point or other, comes across an issue of conflicting human rights. Yet there is surprisingly little literature on this issue; especially if one wants to examine the matter at a general level, above specific conflicts such as those between freedom of expression and the right to non-discrimination, or between religious freedom and women's rights. The international conference on conflicts between fundamental rights, which took place in Ghent (Belgium) in December 2006, brought together a diverse group of human rights scholars who reflected on this issue from different angles. The papers in this volume are selected from among those that were presented at the conference. The issue of conflicting rights is examined in both domestic and international human rights law, and deals with many different types of human rights, including economic and social rights. Some are empirical, describing and analyzing how courts and legislators deal with these issues. Others adopt a normative approach, establishing criteria that may guide future judges and lawmakers confronted with conflicts between fundamental rights.