Critical Theory and Human Rights

David McGrogan is Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School

• Introduction1 Solipsism and imperialism2 Between nomos and telos3 Human rights’ directing idea4 The governmentalisation of global human rights governance5 Tactics rather than laws6 Nothing but rejoicingConclusionIndex

'A formidable corpus of case law and other normative outputs have been developed in justification of positive human rights obligations and in favour of expansion of their scope and content. Critical theory and human rights: From compassion to coercion shows the inadequacy of an account of positive obligations that fails to seriously appreciate their intrusiveness and power of coercion. The book shows how human rights law interpreted as imposing ever more expanding positive obligations, runs the risk of undermining the very reason for which it was historically established - preserving individual freedoms.'Dr Vladislava Stoyanova, Associate Professor of Public International Law at Lund University in Sweden