Preventive detention law is a subject which continues to receive great international attention. In recent years the legal rights of detainees have been more & more frequently litigated, & significant new approaches have been developed. There is, however, no current publication which deals with the new preventive detention law. The purpose of this book is to provide a discussion of the new preventive detention law in 15 common-law jurisdictions, mainly in Asia & Africa, focusing on the practical operation of the law rather than the theoretical issues relating to the legitimacy of such laws. The book will be of practical assistance to those practicing or studying this important area of law. It will be of particular interest to human rights lawyers, activists & researchers. All the chapters are contributed by academics or practitioners specializing in the field of human rights law.

The essays and commentaries in this collection were presented at a Con ference on Problems of International Law in the Western Hemisphere, the Second Conference on Problems of Regional International Law under the joint sponsorship of the American Society of International Law and the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, April 2 & 3, 1971. Contributors have been given the opportunity to revise their papers since their original presentation. The editors acknowledge with gratitude the important contributions made by the Chairmen of the respective panels, namely, Professor Louis Henkin of Columbia Law School (Water Resources Panel), Professor Richard B. Lillich of the University of Virginia Law School (panel on Intervention) and Dr. Egon Schwelb of the United Nations (Human Rights Panel). The assistance of the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in the organization of the conference and that of the New York University Center for International Studies in the editing of these papers have been indispensable. We wish to make particular mention of the unstinting secretarial support of Ms. Donna Welensky and Ms. Judith Chazen. Certain problems would have been insuperable without the critical (in all senses) aid provided by Lyn Rodley. . The descriptions of contributors are those that obtained at the time of the conference. Since then, Professors Rovine and Rodley have moved to new pastures, the former to the Department of State's Office of the Legal Adviser, the latter to Amnesty International, while Dr.

Over the past sixty years the regional human rights systems have surpassed the UN human rights bodies in affording protection to the victims of human rights violations. Most of these systems have courts that are empowered to issue legally binding judgments and reparations for violations of human rights, which states have been unwilling to accord the UN system. The essays selected for this volume examine the structure and functioning of the principal regional human rights systems in the world today: 1) the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights, 2) the European Court of Human Rights, 3) the African Commission and Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights and 4) the ASEAN Intergovernmental Human Rights Commission. These systems guarantee primarily civil and political rights. Central to all four systems is the necessity of a democratic form of government to guarantee these rights, although not all governments, parties to these regional treaties, are democracies. These articles trace the history of these systems, in particular, the expansion of their membership to include almost all independent countries in the region, and their evolution towards recognition of a 'right to democracy'.

This book explores the comparative historical evolution of the European, Inter-American and African regional human rights systems. The book devotes attention to various factors that have shaped the systems: the different circumstances in which they were founded; the influence of major states and inter-state politics within their respective regions; gradual processes of institutional evolution; and the impact of human rights advocates and claimants. Throughout, the book devotes careful attention to the impact of institutional and procedural choices on the functioning of human rights systems. Overarchingly, the book explores the contextually-generated differences between the three systems, suggesting that human rights practice is less unitary than it might at times appear. Prescriptively, the book proposes that, contrary to the received wisdom in some quarters, the Inter-American system's dual-track approach may provide the most promising model in regards to future human rights system design.