Europe

By the end of the eighteenth century, politicians in America and France were invoking the natural rights of man to wrest sovereignty away from kings and lay down universal basic entitlements. Exactly how and when did “rights” come to justify such measures? In On the Spirit of Rights, Dan Edelstein answers this question by examining the complex genealogy of the rights that regimes enshrined in the American and French Revolutions.

How can we think about people and cultures unlike our own? In the early modern period, the fact of human diversity presented Europeans with little cause for anxiety: they simply assumed the superiority of the West. During the 18th century this view was gradually abandoned, as thinkers argued that other peoples possessed reason and sensibility, and thus deserved the same respect that Westerners accorded themselves.

Social and cultural changes have led to free speech claims being made in novel contexts: to challenge the validity of bans on tobacco advertising, to publish 'kiss and tell' stories about celebrities, and to resist attempts to regulate the Internet. In this fully revised and updated new edition of his classic work, Barendt considers the meaning and scope of freedom of speech. How far should free speech and expression clauses go to protect pornography, commercial advertising, and public meetings on the streets? Does this freedom cover desecration of a national flag?

Here, for the first time in one volume, is the full story of crimes committed by the Nazi leaders and of the trials in which they were brought to judgement. Conot reconstructs in a single absorbing narrative not only the events at Nuremburg but the offenses with which the accused were charged. He brilliantly characterizes each of the twenty-one defendants, vividly presenting each case and inspecting carefully the process of indictment, prosecution, defense and sentencing.

This book explains and critiques the position adopted by the UK Supreme Court on disputes involving human rights, especially those protected by the Human Rights Act 1998. Building upon the fact that the UK Supreme Court, which began operating in 2009, has inherited case law developed over many decades by the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, the book considers whether the Supreme Court’s current views are internally consistent and externally in line with the standards adopted by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

There is a long history of laws responding to terrorism that have been utilized in the United Kingdom. This article outlines the important strands of development, including in the former colonies of the British Empire, in Ireland, and in mainland Britain itself. It offers an overview of contemporary legislation — the Terrorism Act 2000, the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 and the Terrorism Act 2006.

This article conducts a critical discourse analysis of the Hungarian government’s National Consultation campaign on ‘immigration and terrorism’ in early 2015. The analysis draws on a discourse-historical approach to illuminate how the language and contents of the consultation draw on the discursive and political repertoires of the post-2010 Orbán governments and how, at the same time, they are underpinned by particular elements in the history of migration and diversity in Hungary.

Translated by Assenka Oksiloff.

The essays explain the anti-democratic features and limits of Soviet-type totalitarian systems of power. They discuss such concepts as ideology, democracy, civil liberty, law and the state from a perspective which is radically different from that of people living in liberal western democracies. The authors also discuss the prospects for democratic change under totalitarian conditions. Steven Lukes' introduction provides an invaluable political and historical context for these writings.

This study was an elaboration of ideas he first proposed in 1933 in his address to the Fifth International Conference for the Unification of Penal Law (1933), which argued that attacks on racial, religious and ethnic groups should be considered international crimes. Important for the prosecution of the Nazis, it helped to establish the framework for all subsequent efforts to punish crimes against humanity.