Wednesday, March 19, 2014

van Beers, Corrias, & Werner: Humanity across International Law and Biolaw

Britta van Beers (Vrije Universiteit - Legal Theory), Luigi Corrias (Vrije Universiteit - Law), & Wouter G. Werner (Vrije Universiteit - Law) have published Humanity across International Law and Biolaw (Cambridge Univ. Press 2014). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:
The concepts of humanity, human dignity and mankind have emerged in different contexts across international law and biolaw. This raises many different questions. What are the aims for which 'humanity' is mobilised? How do these aims affect the ensuing interpretations of this concept? What are the negative counterparts of humanity, mankind and human dignity? And what happens if a concept developed in one particular context is taken up in another? By bringing together research from international law, biolaw and legal theory, this volume answers such questions by analysing how the concepts overlap and contradict each other across the disciplines. The result is not an examination of what humanity is but rather what it does and what it brings about in a variety of contexts.