Human Rights Law and Personal Identity / Edition 1

by Jill Marshall

Overview

This book explores the role human rights law plays in the formation, and protection, of our personal identities. Drawing from a range of disciplines, Jill Marshall examines how human rights law includes and excludes specific types of identity, which feed into moral norms of human freedom and human dignity and their translation into legal rights.

The book takes on a three part structure. Part I traces the definition of identity, and follows the evolution of, and protects, a right to personal identity and personality within human rights law. It specifically examines the development of a right to personal identity as property, the inter-subjective nature of identity, and the intercession of power and inequality. Part II evaluates past and contemporary attempts to describe the core of personal identity, including theories concerning the soul, the rational mind, and the growing influence of neuroscience and genetics in explaining what it means to be human. It also explores the inter-relation and conflict between universal principles and culturally specific rights. Part III focuses on issues and case law that can be interpreted as allowing self-determination. Marshall argues that while in an age of individual identity, people are increasingly obliged to live in conformed ways, pushing out identities that do not fit with what is acceptable. Drawing on feminist theory, the book concludes by arguing how human rights law would be better interpreted as a force to enable respect for human dignity and freedom, interpreted as empowerment and self-determination whilst acknowledging our inter-subjective identities.

In drawing on socio-legal, philosophical, biological and feminist outlooks, this book is truly interdisciplinary, and will be of great interest and use to scholars and students of human rights law, legal and social theory, gender and cultural studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138683266
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/21/2016
Series:	Routledge Research in Human Rights Law
Pages:	286
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jill Marshall is a Professor of Law in the School of Law at the University of Leicester, UK.

Table of Contents

Introduction Part I Whose Identity and What Rights? 1. The Identity of the Person in Human Rights Law 2. The Universal and Equal Quality of Our Individual Identities? Part II Protecting our Fixed Core Identity? 3. Souls, Sex and Brains 4. Biology and Blood 5. Culture, Ethnicity and Religion: Permitted Expressions of Identity? Part III Empowering and Enabling Our Identities to Exist 6. What Free Expression of Identity? 7. Safety, Love and Care in Creating Identity Conclusion: Socially Formed and Self Determining Identity