LAW4155: International Human Rights

Optional assignment (40%) + exam (60%), otherwise you do a 100% exam. For the optional assignment, you are free to choose your own research topic (subject to approval by Adam), provided it has some relevance to the topics covered by this subject. This is a good chance for you to do some research into an area of human rights you are passionate about! Some of the topics approved in 2012 included offshore processing of refugees, abortion, environmental rights, humanitarian interventions, ASIO assessments and the right to a fair trial, and freedom of religion.

This is one of the very few law subjects I genuinely enjoyed. It is less intense (in my opinion anyway) than the compulsory law subjects in the sense that it is more policy-based and open-ended, and there have been many interesting discussions in lectures because of the nature of the subject.

The course focuses generally on the two primary international human rights treaties (ICCPR and ICESCR), but we do go into some depth (that is, looking into some of the international jurisprudence) on some of the specific civil and political rights, such as the right to life and the obligation on states to avoid discrimination. NB: the right to life case studies are about the death penalty, not abortion (if abortion is something that you're not comfortable discussing etc). You'll also learn about the limits on these rights and how the UN enforces them.

We also cover regional human rights systems, Australia's international human rights record (spoiler alert: our record on refugees is atrocious) and the relationship between human rights and terrorism. Recently (May 2013) the optional protocol for the ICESCR (treaty for economic, social and cultural rights) came into effect, which allows individuals to make complaints about states. So if you're studying this in 2014 or beyond, you'll hopefully get to see some interesting jurisprudence about that treaty as well. Unfortunately for us, we only really had the ICCPR-related (treaty for civil and political rights) decisions.

Finally, there is some discussion about the expanding scope of human rights - does it cover environmental rights? The rights of animals? Future generations? What are the obligations of non-state actors like corporations?

Adam himself is very knowledgeable, obviously, considering he wrote the textbook
I highly recommend this subject to anyone who is interested in human rights law.

Adam McBeth

Yes, on the library database

5/5

Yes, with video capture

Prescribed textbook is very good for getting more detail on the stuff talked about in lectures. The lecturer is one of the authors, so he sticks quite closely to what the textbook covers.

This semester we started in week 6 and had a 4-hour lecture per week

2013 semester 1