Reasons to Rethink Human Rights Penality
3:30pm - 5:00pm /
Tuesday 22nd November 2022
Type: Seminar /
Category: Department
- SLSJ Marketing, Recruitment and Events Team
- Admission: Free Admission
- Event website
- Book now
Add this event to my calendar
Click on "Create a calendar file" and your browser will download a .ics file for this event.
Microsoft Outlook: Download the file, double-click it to open it in Outlook, then click on "Save & Close" to save it to your calendar. If that doesn't work go into Outlook, click on the File tab, then on Open & Export, then Open Calendar. Select your .ics file then click on "Save & Close".
Google Calendar: download the file, then go into your calendar. On the left where it says "Other calendars" click on the arrow icon and then click on Import calendar. Click on Browse and select the .ics file, then click on Import.
Apple Calendar: The file may open automatically with an option to save it to your calendar. If not, download the file, then you can either drag it to Calendar or import the file by going to File >Import > Import and choosing the .ics file.
Human rights law is often associated with the protection of personal autonomy and freedom against coercive and carceral State power, with viewing the criminalisation and coercive suppression of human activity with suspicion, and with closely safeguarding criminal suspects and defendants from excesses, abuses, and arbitrariness in the operation of the State’s penal apparatus. Yet human rights law, as interpreted and applied by authoritative bodies, is also replete with positive obligations to criminalise, police, criminally investigate, prosecute and punish human rights violations. This phenomenon may be referred to as ‘human rights penality’. In this talk, I make the case for rethinking human rights penality from the perspective of a constructively critical supporter of human rights. I identify some of the key ways in which human rights penality is bad for human rights, and invite those committed to human rights to rethink in more protective terms the obligations to which human rights penality is attached.