Today and tomorrow, October 17-18, 2014, the
University of Chicago Law School will host a
conference on "Has International Human Rights Law Failed?" The program is
here. Here's the idea:
Over the last decade, a growing body of empirical scholarship has emerged that tries to test whether international human rights treaties have helped to improve human rights practices. Although this line of research has produced some evidence suggesting that human rights treaties may have made a difference in specific circumstances, the balance of the evidence has not found a consistent relationship between ratification of human rights treaties and improved human rights practices. This evidence raises the question that is the topic of the conference: has international human rights law failed? This conference will bring together prominent political scientists, historians, philosophers, and legal scholars to discuss this question.
