The Limits of Human Rights

Bardo Fassbender, Professor of Public International Law, European Law, and Public Law, University of St Gallen,Knut Traisbach, Academic Director, Venice Academy of Human Rights

Bardo Fassbender is Professor of International Law at the Bundeswehr University in Munich. He studied at the University of Bonn and holds an LL.M from Yale Law School and a Doctor iuris from the Humboldt University in Berlin. Before joining the Bundeswehr University, he taught in Berlin, St Gallen, and Munich (Ludwig Maximilians University). His principal fields of research are international law, United Nations law, German constitutional law, comparative constitutional law and theory, and the history of international and constitutional law. Among his many publications are the books UN Security Council and the Right of Veto: A Constitutional Perspective (The Hague/London/Boston, 1998), Der offene Bundesstaat: Studien zur auswartigen Gewalt und zur Volkerrechtssubjektivitat bundesstaatlicher Teilstaaten in Europa (Tubingen, 2007), and The United Nations Charter as the Constitution of the International Community (Leiden/Boston, 2009).

Knut Traisbach is Programme Director of the Venice Academy of Human Rights since 2010. He joined EIUC in 2009/2010 as a Teaching Fellow for International Relations and Human Rights in the E.MA master programme and continued as programme responsible for the Venice Academy of Human Rights since its establishment. During his doctoral studies at the European University Institute in Florence he was a visiting researcher at Yale University. He has worked at several academic research institutes in Europe, including in Germany, the UK, Italy and Spain. His principal research interests lie in the methodological combination of public international law and international relations theory, the role of institutional and non-State actors, in particular of experts, in norm creation processes and in international legal and political theory. He has published on issues relating to both international public law and international relations theory.

I: History
Humanity and the claim to self-evidence, Lynn Hunt
Comment by Bardo Fassbender, Bardo Fassbender
The ambivalence of human rights, Jan Eckel
Comment by Jenny S. Martinez, Jenny S. Martinez
II: Paradigms and Biases
Human rights in international politics, Christian Reus-Smit
Comment by Basak Cali, Basak Cali
The limits of the humanitarian tradition, Frederic Megret
Comment by Knut Traisbach, Knut Traisbach
The limits of human rights in a 'moving world - DDS elements of a dynamic approach, Mireille Delmas-Marty
Comment by Marie-Benedicte Dembour, Marie-Benedicte Dembour
III: Civilisations and Multiplicity
Trans-civilisational and cosmopolitan perspective, Kwame Anthony Appiah
Comment by Neus Torbisco Casals, Pompeu Fabra
Wider effects of human rights, social change, social movement, and progress, Martha Nussbaum
Comment by Fareda Banda, Fareda Banda
Hilary Charlesworth