Coercive Human Rights

Traditionally, human rights have protected those facing the sharp edge of the criminal justice system. But over time human rights law has become increasingly infused with duties to mobilise criminal law towards protection and redress for violation of rights. These developments give rise to a whole host of questions concerning the precise parameters of coercive human rights, the rationale(s) that underpin them, and their effects and implications for victims, perpetrators, domestic legal systems, and for the theory and practice of human rights and criminal justice. This collection addresses these questions with a focus on the rich jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The collection explores four interlocking themes surrounding the issue of coercive human rights: First, the key threads in the doctrine of the ECtHR on duties to mobilise the criminal law as a means of delivering human rights protection. Secondly, the factors that contribute to a readiness to demand coercive measures, including discrimination and vulnerability, and other key justificatory reasoning shaping the development of coercive human rights. Thirdly, the most pressing challenges for the ECtHR's coercive duties doctrine, including: - how it relates to theories and rationales of criminalisation and criminal punishment; - its implications for the fundamental tenets of human rights law itself; - its relationship to transitional justice objectives; and - how (far) it coheres with the imperative of effective protection for persons in precarious or vulnerable situations. Fourthly, the (prospective) evolution of the coercive human rights doctrine and its application within national jurisdictions.

Drawing on cases, Stark identifies the problems with our current approach to domestic violence, outlines the components of coercive control, and then uses this alternate framework to analyse the cases of battered women charged with criminal offenses directed at their abusers.

There has been much debate about mental health law reform and mental capacity legislation in recent years with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities also having a major impact on thinking about the issue. This edited volume explores the concept of ‘coercive care’ in relation to individuals such as those with severe mental illnesses, those with intellectual and cognitive disabilities and those with substance use problems. With a focus on choice and capacity the book explores the impact of and challenges posed by the provision of care in an involuntary environment. The contributors to the book look at mental health, capacity and vulnerable adult’s care as well as the law related to those areas. The book is split into four parts which cover: human rights and coercive care; legal capacity and coercive care; the legal coordination of coercive care and coercive care and individuals with cognitive impairments. The book covers new ground by exploring issues arising from the coercion of persons with various disabilities and vulnerabilities, helping to illustrate how the capacity to provide consent to treatment and care is impaired by reason of their condition.

Emerging neurotechnology offers increasingly individualised brain information, enabling researchers to identify mental states and content. When accurate and valid, these brain-reading technologies also provide data that could be useful in criminal legal procedures, such as memory detection with EEG and the prediction of recidivism with fMRI. Yet, unlike in medicine, individuals involved in criminal cases will often be reluctant to undergo brain-reading procedures. This raises the question of whether coercive brain-reading could be permissible in criminal law. Coercive Brain-Reading in Criminal Justice examines this question in view of European human rights: the prohibition of ill-treatment, the right to privacy, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and the privilege against self-incrimination. The book argues that, at present, the established framework of human rights does not exclude coercive brain-reading. It does, however, delimit the permissible use of forensic brain-reading without valid consent. This cautionary, cutting-edge book lays a crucial foundation for understanding the future of criminal legal proceedings in a world of ever-advancing neurotechnology.

This title was first published in 2001: This book brings together the experiences of a diverse range of leading human rights advocates and activists to demonstrate strategies for protecting human rights. The volume identifies strategic problems and approaches and offers a range of strategies that hold promise for sanctioning human rights offenders and for inhibiting the behaviour of those who might otherwise engage in such activities. The contributors include, inter alia, Noam Chomsky, Justice Richard Goldstone of the Constitutional Court of South Africa who served as Chief Prosecutor of the UN War Crimes Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and David Rawson, United States Ambassador to Rwanda during the tragic genocide. Those who work in the disparate field of human rights increasingly understand the need to see the system strategically rather than piecemeal. This volume captures their insights and looks at both private and public actors, including the uses and limitations of international fora to prosecute violations. The focus is expanded to include private actions because political issues too often interfere with enforcement of human rights laws - allowing violators to hide behind the unwillingness of national governments to take action.

This book considers whether coercive control (particularly non-physical forms of family violence) should be prohibited by the criminal law. Based on the premise that traditional understandings of family violence are severely limited, it considers whether the core of family violence is power-based controlling or coercive behavior: attempts by men to psychologically dominate their partners. Such behavior can cause significant psychological, physical and economic harms to victims and is increasingly recognized as a form of human rights abuse. The book considers the new offences that have been introduced in England and Wales (controlling or coercive behavior), Ireland (controlling behavior) and Scotland (domestic abuse). It invites consideration of three key questions: Do conventional criminal laws adequately regulate non-physical abuse? Is the criminal law an appropriate mechanism for responding to the coercive control of family members? And if a new and distinctive offence is warranted, what is the optimal form of that offence? This ground-breaking work is essential reading for researchers and practitioners interested in coercive control and the proper role of the criminal law as a mechanism for regulating family violence.

A practical tool for legal professionals who wish to strengthen their skills in applying the European Convention on Human Rights and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in their daily work This is the second and expanded edition of a handbook intended to assist judges, lawyers and prosecutors in taking account of the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights and its Protocols (“the European Convention”) – and more particularly of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights – when interpreting and applying codes of criminal procedure and comparable or related legislation. It does so by providing extracts from key rulings of the European Court and the former European Commission of Human Rights that have determined applications complaining about one or more violations of the European Convention in the course of the investigation, prosecution and trial of alleged offences, as well as in the course of appellate and various other proceedings linked to the criminal process.

Many Americans have condemned the “enhanced interrogation” techniques used in the War on Terror as a transgression of human rights. But the United States has done almost nothing to prosecute past abuses or prevent future violations. Tracing this knotty contradiction from the 1950s to the present, historian Alfred W. McCoy probes the political and cultural dynamics that have made impunity for torture a bipartisan policy of the U.S. government. During the Cold War, McCoy argues, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency covertly funded psychological experiments designed to weaken a subject’s resistance to interrogation. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the CIA revived these harsh methods, while U.S. media was flooded with seductive images that normalized torture for many Americans. Ten years later, the U.S. had failed to punish the perpetrators or the powerful who commanded them, and continued to exploit intelligence extracted under torture by surrogates from Somalia to Afghanistan. Although Washington has publicly distanced itself from torture, disturbing images from the prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are seared into human memory, doing lasting damage to America’s moral authority as a world leader.