Trans Rights Are Not Just Human Rights: Legal Strategies for Trans Justice

Author(s):  
Samuel Singer

AbstractHuman rights instruments are but one of many legal advocacy tools used by trans people. Recent legal scholarship emphasizes that human rights laws are not sufficient to address legal challenges facing trans people, particularly intersectional and systemic barriers. This article looks to Canadian trans case law outside of human rights law to reveal the many instances in which trans people’s fight for legal recognition and redress occur outside of the human rights arena. It focuses on trans case law in three areas: family law, the use of name and gender in court, and access to social benefits. Canadian trans jurisprudence illustrates that not only are trans legal strategies outside of human rights plentiful and effective, they are also imperative. An agile and pragmatic approach to trans rights is necessary, particularly when minority rights are under threat, and for trans people on the margins of trans law reforms.

Global Jurist ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (2-3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Can Öztaş

AbstractEuropean human rights protection, ensured by the European Convention and Court of Human Rights, is declared to be universal and inclusive, protecting not only citizens of Europe but also anybody residing within the jurisdiction of the signatory countries. This article challenges this declaration and argues, with the help of some examples from the case law, that European human rights protection is based on the defined concepts of European-ness that exclude the perceived non-European within the Convention and the Court system.


Author(s):  
Whelan Peter

This chapter explores the substantive aspect of the human rights-related legal challenge to European antitrust criminalization, focusing on the impact in this context of the principle of legal certainty. Comprehensibility is advisable with any project of antitrust criminalization. When criminal antitrust sanctions are at issue, such comprehensibility is not merely advisable for theoretical or practical reasons, but is in fact a strict legal requirement: comprehensibility—as one element of the wider principle of legal certainty—is mandated by European human rights law. The examination of the challenge of legal certainty for antitrust criminalization is undertaken from three perspectives, namely: (i) legal certainty and the concept of a criminal antitrust offence; (ii) legal certainty and the substance of a criminal antitrust offence; and (iii) legal certainty and the existence of a criminal antitrust offence.


2021 ◽  
pp. 241-280
Author(s):  
Richard Martin

This chapter examines how the public order script, explored in Chapter 6, was performed by commanders. It begins by exploring how commanders sought to sell the script to the parade and protest groups commanders sought to ‘win over’. If such groups could be won over with the PSNI’s pitch, the likelihood of disorder was greatly diminished, and commanders could better control the event. In some cases, however, the sales pitch proved unsuccessful; marchers and protestors proceeded with their own agendas. In such instances, commanders proved reluctant to intervene too forcefully, for reasons that will become clear. In two high-profile cases, the police approach to disorder has led to legal challenges, both of which reached the UK’s highest court. This introduces the second audience occasionally in receipt of the police script: the courts that must assess the internal self-application of human rights law by police. In their review of police decision-making in these cases, though, the senior judiciary have proven reluctant to interfere, showing deference to officers’ relative expertise, their access to intelligence and the exigencies of operational situations. The final section asks what role human rights law has come to play in managing the kinds of ‘trouble’ that Waddington (1994) identified over two decades ago as crucial to commanders’ decision-making.


2021 ◽  
pp. 283-315
Author(s):  
Richard Martin

The focus of the empirical account of human rights in Part IV is on the suspect’s right to liberty in the context of police custody. In keeping with the style adopted in Part III, the discussion that follows seeks to closely analyse how particular aspects of police practices and decision-making interact with human rights law standards. The aim in this chapter is to explore how the three statutory safeguards established in PACE to protect the suspect’s right to liberty have fared in the face of organizational pressure to detect and ‘clear up’ crime. Using the three due process safeguards established in PACE to form a framework for this chapter’s analysis, the chapter explores how officers apply, dismiss, interpret and reconstruct each of these safeguards in their everyday work. Once again, the richness of this analysis, specifically its appreciation for how law and practice do (or do not) interact, is enhanced by paying close attention to the development of lines of authority in the case law that have, it is argued, watered down the legal standards officers must apply. This analysis of the case law is based on recent judgments from the High Court and Divisional Court of Northern Ireland, as well as from the Court of Appeal in England and Wales.


2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-243
Author(s):  
Gudmundur Alfredsson

Abstract This article surveys some of the many international human rights law issues that come up in connection with the Arctic, such as the rights of indigenous peoples and the formulation of these rights in a draft Nordic Sami Convention. The focus, however, is on recent developments concerning the status of Greenland as a result of an agreement concluded in 2008 between the Danish and Greenlandic authorities. This agreement foresees not only a significant increase in self-government but also opens the door for the Greenlandic people to create an independent State through the exercise of the right to external self-determination as a matter of political decolonisation of an overseas colonial territory.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-135
Author(s):  
Zhan Chiam ◽  
Julia Ehrt

In his recent report, the United Nations Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, examines the “process of abandoning the classification of certain forms of gender as a pathology” – “depathologization”—and elaborates on the “full scope of the duty of the State to respect and promote respect of gender recognition as a component of identity” (p. 2). The report also discusses active measures to respect gender identity and concludes with a list of recommendations. While other United Nations special procedures and agencies have addressed and condemned violence and discrimination on the grounds of gender identity and expression, this report provides a deeper analysis on its root causes. It is the first special procedures report that exclusively addresses human rights with regard to gender identity and expression, and must be considered a mile-stone in the development and enunciation of international human rights law in this regard.


2021 ◽  
pp. 79-96
Author(s):  
Ebru Demir

In its recent jurisprudence on domestic violence, the European Court of Human Rights started to examine the domestic violence cases in the light of relevant international human rights law developed in this specific area. This article examines the engagement of the European Court of Human Rights with other international and regional human rights instruments in domestic violence cases. Upon examination, the article concludes that by integrating its case law into international human rights law the European Court of Human Rights broadens the scope of protection for domestic violence victims and maintains the unity of international law.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document