How do states violate human rights norms after legalization? Why are these violations so persistent? What are the limits of legalization for protecting human rights norms? Conventional wisdom offers a variety of answers to these questions, but most often they conflate laws and norms and focus only on state actions that violate both. While this focus is undoubtedly valuable, it does not capture cases in which states violate human rights norms without technically violating the law. Norm breakers are not necessarily lawbreakers. Focusing exclusively on norm violations that are illegal obscures the possibility that agents could violate norms in a legal manner, engaging in actions that are awful but lawful. Presenting rich case studies of the French expulsion of Roma immigrants from 2007 to 2017 and the Czech segregation of Roma children in schools for those with mild mental disabilities between 1993 and 2017, Evading International Norms argues that the violation of human rights norms often continues after legalization under the cover of technical legality. While laws and norms overlap, interact, and shape each other in many ways, they tend to reflect each other only selectively, which leads to the existence of norm-law gaps. Taking advantage of such gaps, states resist unwanted human rights obligations by transgressing international human rights norms without violating the laws designed to protect them—a process Zoltán I. Búzás names norm evasion. Based on a wealth of evidence, including more than 160 interviews, the book shows that the treatment of the Roma by France and the Czech Republic violated the norm of racial equality in a technically legal fashion. Búzás cautions that the good news about law compliance is not necessarily good news about norm compliance and draws attention to racial discrimination against the Roma, one of the largest and most marginalized European minorities.

How do states violate human rights norms after legalization? Why are these violations so persistent? What are the limits of legalization for protecting human rights norms? Conventional wisdom offers a variety of answers to these questions, but most often they conflate laws and norms and focus only on state actions that violate both. While this focus is undoubtedly valuable, it does not capture cases in which states violate human rights norms without technically violating the law. Norm breakers are not necessarily lawbreakers. Focusing exclusively on norm violations that are illegal obscures the possibility that agents could violate norms in a legal manner, engaging in actions that are awful but lawful. Presenting rich case studies of the French expulsion of Roma immigrants from 2007 to 2017 and the Czech segregation of Roma children in schools for those with mild mental disabilities between 1993 and 2017, Evading International Norms argues that the violation of human rights norms often continues after legalization under the cover of technical legality. While laws and norms overlap, interact, and shape each other in many ways, they tend to reflect each other only selectively, which leads to the existence of norm-law gaps. Taking advantage of such gaps, states resist unwanted human rights obligations by transgressing international human rights norms without violating the laws designed to protect them—a process Zoltán I. Búzás names norm evasion. Based on a wealth of evidence, including more than 160 interviews, the book shows that the treatment of the Roma by France and the Czech Republic violated the norm of racial equality in a technically legal fashion. Búzás cautions that the good news about law compliance is not necessarily good news about norm compliance and draws attention to racial discrimination against the Roma, one of the largest and most marginalized European minorities.

With more than 18 million refugees worldwide, the refugee problem has fostered an intense debate regarding what political changes are necessary in the international system to provide effective solutions in the 1990s and beyond. In the past, refugees have been perceived largely as a problem of international charity, but as the end of the Cold War triggers new refugee movements across the globe, governments are being forced to develop a more systematic approach to the refugee problem. Beyond Charity provides the first extensive overview of the world refugee crisis today, asserting that refugees raise not only humanitarian concerns but also issues of international peace and security. Gil Loescher argues persuasively that a central challenge in the post Cold-War era is to develop a comprehensive refugee policy that preserves the right of asylum while promoting greater political and diplomatic efforts to address the causes of flight. He presents the contemporary crisis in a historical framework and explores the changing role of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Loescher suggests short-term and long-term reforms that address both the current refugee crisis and its underlying causes. The book also details the ways governmental structures and international organizations could be strengthened to assume more effective assistance, protection, and political mediation functions. Beyond Charity helps frame the debate on the global refugee crisis and offers directions for more effective approaches to refugee problems at present and in the future.

Interest in international law has increased greatly over the past decade, largely because of its central place in discussions such as the Iraq War and Guantanamo, the World Trade Organisation, the anti-capitalist movement, the Kyoto Convention on climate change, and the apparent failure of the international system to deal with the situations in Palestine and Darfur, and the plights of refugees and illegal immigrants around the world. This Very Short Introduction explains what international law is, what its role in international society is, and how it operates. Vaughan Lowe examines what international law can and cannot do and what it is and what it isn't doing to make the world a better place. Focussing on the problems the world faces, Lowe uses terrorism, environmental change, poverty, and international violence to demonstrate the theories and practice of international law, and how the principles can be used for international co-operation.

Peremptory Norms of General International Law (Jus Cogens): Disquisitions and Dispositions is a collection of contributions on various aspects of jus cogens in international law.

Contracts are relevant, frequently central, for a significant number of investment disputes. Yet, the way tribunals ascertain their content remains largely underexplored. How do tribunals interpret contracts in investment treaty arbitration? How should they interpret contracts? Does national law have any role to play? Contract Interpretation in Investment Treaty Arbitration: A Theory of the Incidental Issue addresses these questions. The monograph offers a valuable insight into the practice and theory of contract interpretation in investment treaty arbitration. By proposing a theoretical frame for seamless integration of contract interpretation into the overall structure of decision-making, the book contributes to predictability, coherence, sufficiency and correctness of the tribunals’ interpretative practices in investment treaty arbitration.