Introduction
Human Rights law involves that area of international law that seeks to set normative rules and values for people's basic rights, inter alia, to freedom of conscience and freedom from bodily harm, two overarching topics that may be broken down into many sub-topics or related topics, such as the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, and the rights of the child.
The topic of international human rights law includes international conventions and decisions of international tribunals which, analogizing to the common law, might be termed "primary law." In addition, commentary and research, what might be termed "secondary sources" in the common law, will be found in abundance in both treatises and journal articles.
In addition, international human rights law has very good web resources, a selection of which will be provided in this guide.
Introductory Materials
The following webpages provide good resources for starting research in Human Rights Law:
- JuriGlobe: World Legal SystemsIncludes classifications of countries according to legal systems and international linguistic areas. Also provides general bibliography on comparative and foreign law.
- Human Rights Library (University of Minnesota) This link opens in a new windowContains more than sixty thousand core human rights documents, including several hundred human rights treaties and other primary international human rights instruments. The site also links to four thousand websites and provides a special human rights search engine.
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