Group-differentiated rights, or rights that attach on the basis of membership in a particular social or cultural group, are an increasingly common and controversial aspect of modern pluralistic legal systems. Eric Mitnick offers the first comprehensive treatment of this important form of right. The book describes and critically assesses the group-differentiated form of 'right' from within analytical, constitutive and liberal theory. It further examines the extent to which group-differentiated rights constitute aspects of human identity, and it asks whether this should be a cause for concern from the perspective of liberal theory. The more detailed normative work advanced in the book contextually applies the constitutive understanding of rights and the principles of liberal membership to particular examples of group-differentiated citizenship. Such examples range from ascriptive statuses such as slavery and alienage, to more affirmative classifications, such as those apparent in the contexts of civil unions and affirmative action, finally to the claims of religious and other cultural groups for official recognition and accommodation of group-based beliefs and practices.

Critically assessing the group-differentiated form of 'right' from within analytical, constitutive and liberal theory, this book examines to what extent the group-differentiated form of right serves to constitute aspects of human identity and whether this should be a cause for concern.

The Concept of Group Rights in International Law offers a critical appraisal of the concept of group rights in international law on the basis of an extensive survey of existing group rights in contemporary international law. Among some of its findings is the observation that an ideological way of arguing about this legal category is widespread among scholars as well as practitioners; it sees this ideological framing as one of the main reasons why international law has so far been very reluctant to provide group rights and to call them by their name. Accordingly, the book re-evaluates the concept based on the experience with existing group rights in international law and pleads for a more pragmatic approach. Despite limitations with the concept, the overall thesis is that there is a role for group rights as a pragmatic tool allowing for a principled approach to substate groups through international law. Such an approach could turn group rights into an arguably minor, but nevertheless, highly relevant legal category of international law.

Collective cultural rights are commonly perceived as the most neglected or least developed category of human rights. Cultural Rights as Collective Rights – An International Law Perspective endeavours to challenge this view and offers a comprehensive, critical analysis of recent developments in distinct areas of international law and jurisprudence, from every region of the world, in relation to the scope, legal content, and enforceability of such rights. Leading international scholars explore the conceptualisation and operationalisation of collective cultural rights as human rights, encompassing community rights, and discuss the ways in which such rights may collide with other, mostly individual, human rights. As such, Cultural Rights as Collective Rights – An International Law Perspective offers a cross-cutting and original overview on how the protection, recognition and enforcement of collective cultural rights affect the development, changes and formation of general international law norms.

Vulnerability is a term that can be studied from different dimensions – the social, legal, economic and political. This book explores these dimensions and captures the vulnerabilities of particular groups in Malaysia – the transgenders, women, children, aboriginal and indigenous people, the rural fisherfolk, the stateless and the economically disempowered. Mirroring the spectrum of »vulnerable groups« defined by the United Nations Global Compact in the 2016 Sustainable Development Goals Report, this book highlights the unique features that portray vulnerabilities – including gender, age, indigeneity, socioeconomic status and ethnicity. The case studies of vulnerable groups in Malaysia – a multicultural, diverse plural Asian state – would be appreciated by both undergraduate and postgraduate students, academics, researchers and policy-makers, keen in Asian Studies and vulnerabilities.

Margaret Gilbert presents the first full-length treatment of a central class of rights: demand-rights. To have such a right is to have the standing or authority to demand a particular action of another person. Gilbert argues that joint commitment is a ground of demand-rights, and gives joint commitment accounts of both agreements and promises.

This book addresses one of the most serious societal questions of our time: how to create new spaces and frameworks for minority recognition given the State-centric sovereignty discourse and the persisting equality jargon that dominate today's world. By so doing it approaches minority rights by means of a critical engagement with its underlying premises. Notably, it makes attempts to both construct and reconfigure neglected legal categories, in particular collective rights, and to deconstruct domestic constitutional orders. More precisely, it does so through diametrically opposed levels of analysis, that is top-down and bottom-up logics, by exploring sociolegal strategies, forms and formats of governance on the one hand, and grassroots demands on the other. Drawing on empirical findings in Europe and Latin America, the book gives us a sense of how recognition needs to be contextualised against the background of right-wing trends in Europe and the re-building of the State in the Andes. This is a fascinating study of one of the key questions engaging human rights, minority studies and discrimination law.

This book brings together a group of innovative scholars examining the contemporary issue of effecting gender and sexuality justice in the context of Asia, consonant with engendering a just, equitable and sustainable development for all. These grassroots initiatives are woven through three complementary sections of the book: gender justice in Asia, sexuality justice in Asia, and finding resolutions through conflict. The book foregrounds strategies that aim to call out and challenge existing gender and sexuality injustices with regard to women and the LGBTIQA+ community by: assessing the efficacy of gender mainstreaming policies through micro-credit schemes for women in East Java, Indonesia; proliferating the signifiers of the hijab (veil) by postmodern Malay-Muslim women or ‘Hijabistas’ within the consumerist culture of Malaysia; making visible the injustices of the Syariah legal system for non-Muslim women, and ground-breaking legislation that could potentially recognise same-sex marriages in Thailand; privileging the narratives of gay women diplomats within the highly masculinised field of diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region; foregrounding the narratives of Filipino gay men, intimate partner violence among young Indonesian Christian young people, masculine-identifying lesbians in Singapore, young LGBT people in rural Vietnam, and a Chinese-Muslim Malaysian female-to-male transgender person; and proposing new ways of becoming an inclusive church through the radical act of befriending persons living with HIV and AIDS in Southeast Asia. This book celebrates diverse and inclusive voices and strategies of gender and sexual agents of change in envisioning and bringing to fruition a just and transformative society for all. It is of interest to students and scholars researching gender and sexuality in areas of development studies, international relations, socio-legal studies, and literary studies.

Through the Global Lens uses a global perspective to analyze human affairs. This text looks at each of the six social sciences (sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, psychology, and geography), and uses case studies, feature film analyses, maps, and photos to highlight important historical events and concepts throughout.