Reports: Ethicists Meet: "Not the Usual Suspects

The Other India: Realities of an Emerging Power

The Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, founded in 1997 as the Human Rights Program, supports innovative, interdisciplinary teaching and research projects that explore the theory and practice of human rights. The Pozen Center advances the global study of human rights through: • A rigorous liberal arts curriculum that combines humanities and social sciences perspectives and analysis with practice-oriented teaching; • Research initiatives that bring together faculty and students from across the University to address the challenges of human rights in a global world of diverse histories, politics, religions, and cultures; • Programs designed to enhance the University community's engagement with local, national, and international human rights issues, practices, and organizations. The Human Rights Internship Program (http://humanrights.uchicago.edu/internships/) provides funded summer fellowships to College, graduate, and professional students to gain hands-on experience at host organizations around the world and in the United States. The Pozen Center also advances human rights research through grants to faculty and doctoral students that support innovative scholarship, as well as conferences and symposia. Multi-year faculty initiatives develop projects such as health and human rights, philosophical approaches to labor rights, and changing norms of refugee protection. The Pozen Center fosters a human rights culture at the University of Chicago and in the broader community with public events (http:// humanrights.uchicago.edu/page/events/) throughout the year. Conferences, lectures, workshops, performances, and exhibitions bring scholars and practitioners from around the world to explore human rights in theory and practice.

2009

Osama Siddique, an Associate Professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences, recent S.J.D. graduate from Harvard Law, and Pakistani legal scholar.

1999

I am greatly honored to deliver this distinguished Lecture, particularly given the illustrious list of lecturers who have preceded me to this podium.' My own path to this podium began in Washington, D.C., where as a private lawyer I specialized in issues of international business and trade law: what most American law schools now think of as "international business transactions." 2 But even while working on these matters, I became increasingly diverted toward the novel, growing field of international human rights. While in private practice in the early 1980s, I became involved in the representation of the American hostages who had been held for 444 days in the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Once starting an academic career, I took occasional forays into international human rights advocacy, 4 but my main focus remained on the law of international business transactions and United States foreign policy, two examples of what Henry Steiner and Detlev Vagts have felicitously dubbed "Transnational Legal Problems."' t) 1999 Harold Hongju Koh.

2016

I would like to express my deep appreciation to my committee chair, Professor Aaron James, whose willingness to engage in so many conversations with me (over so many cups of coffee) made this dissertation possible. His guidance, persistence, and professional example have been invaluable to the development of my scholarship. I would also like to thank my committee as a whole, the membership of which is perhaps unusually large because I value the intelligence and insight of each member so much and because, as a collective, I knew they would be a kindly force that could serve to fence me in from every direction. And they did. Along with Professor James, Professor Bonnie Kent proved to be a master diagnostician of arguments. Everything ever written would be better off passed through her hands. Professor Martin Schwab, through gentle persuasion pushed the view wider while still keeping me focused. Professor Carrie Menkel-Meadow, with her deep expertise in all things feminist and transnational, and her abiding kindness, has been a wealth of inspiration and support. And, finally, Jeff Helmreich has provided a solid, essential, and supportive bridge and unifier for all these many forces. I am grateful to you all. In addition, a hearty thank you must be extended to Professor Allen Buchanan whose correspondence has been helpful and illuminating, but most of all encouraging. Thanks also to the dutiful and loyal members of my reading group, "The Justice League," whose members include Daniel Pilchman, Casey Hall, Violet Mackinnon, and Simona Capisani. They, along with my smart, sassy, and formidable friends, Megan Zane and Valentina Ricci, have devoted hours upon hours of time to my many wonders, ponderances, and deliberations over how it is human rights should work and must work for everyone. And lastly, to my family for their patience and support, my love for you truly knows no bounds.

Human Rights Quarterly

2014 Book Reviews 971 political philosophy, with special interest in democratic theory, critical theory, and metaethics. Erman is the

Humanity

What are human rights, and for whom do they work? How do actors across different contexts engage with, and sometimes restructure, the meanings and consequences of human rights law? Does this alter the lived experiences of people in different parts of the world? How, and to what extent, can a predominantly Western framework of human rights law deliver justice for those typically excluded from Western institutions? For peace scholars, advocates, and activists, the promise of international human rights law has not been met. While significant victories must not be understated, rarely has international law been translated into real protections for people living in different kinds of violence, trauma, and precarity. However, the cultural, political, and legal limitations of human rights law are not insurmountable; these challenges add importance to the groundwork done by community organizers and activists, advocates and allies, journalists who draw public attention to human rights defenders, and even social or natural scientists (whose credibility, research, documentation, and testimony can further bridge the gaps between the everyday realities of the peoples and ecosystems under threat, and the rigid structures and limited power of the laws meant to protect them). This class explores these problems, questions, and challenges by crossing several thresholds: between the fields of legal studies, global politics, and anthropology; between the study of institutions and of the humans who construct and are shaped by them; and between the cases for environmental sustainability, human rights, and peace. We will center our attention on how human rights are contested by people in different spheres, including states, corporations, NGOs, social movements, and civil society. Human rights are constantly being claimed, developed, and remade, by multiple actors. How does this matter in everyday life? We will seek to understand these dynamics from the perspectives of people working on and affected by this contestation. In questioning the efficacy of human rights as institutions, discourses, and embodied politics, and exploring illustrative answers, we will cross another threshold: between an advocacy perspective and a critical eye towards the ethnocentricity and biases in so-called " universal " mechanisms of justice. We will thus emerge better equipped to engage with and participate in struggles for decolonization and justice.

This is an introductory course to international human rights law. The course will introduce students to the concepts of human rights, within the system of public international law. The course aims to work at three levels: to examine the role of human rights (law) in history and politics; to analyze the doctrine of international human rights law; to introduce key areas of current and future human rights practice. The goal is to achieve, to the extent possible, theoretical sophistication, doctrinal analytical competence, and a capacity to identify what kind of human rights practice will be important in the future. We will accordingly look at the historical evolution and political role of human rights law and examine key debates, both in the past and the present. We will look at the key institutions and mechanisms, at the global and regional level, for the monitoring and enforcement of human rights law and the extent of their jurisdiction. We will analyze how international law has articulated specific rights (for example the right to life, the prohibition of torture, the right to self-determination) as well as in specific contexts and themes (for example human rights and climate change; business and human rights) to understand the reach and function of human rights law in the international system. We will finish with a look at international human rights law practice, while reflecting on the most powerful critiques.