Minding the Gap: Children with Disabilities and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

This chapter provides a critical assessment of the approach adopted by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) towards children with disabilities and its implications for socializing States Parties to both ‘right’ and ‘rights’ behaviour. It discusses the ways in which ‘rights talk’ for children with disabilities, itself a relatively recent development in this context, has been predominantly needs based in its substantive content, and explores whether the exacerbated disadvantage experienced by children with disabilities as a result of the particular interaction between disability and childhood is effectively addressed and given due weight by the new Convention. The CRPD's provisions are discussed in the context of children with disabilities and their potential to provide effective redress assessed. The chapter concludes with some critical reflections on the extent to which the CRPD can really be understood as minding the gap for children with disabilities.

Article 6 ECHR, Civil Rights and the Enduring Role of the Common Law

This article examines the role that the common law has played in Human Rights Act 1998 case law on the protection of 'civil rights' within the meaning of Article 6 ECHR. Focusing on Article 6 ECHR's 'disclosure' and 'full jurisdiction' requirements, it highlights an increasingly nuanced relationship between the ECHR and common law in cases under and outside the Human Rights Act 1998. Although the general pattern within the case law has been one of domestic court fidelity to the ECHR - something that is wholly consistent with section 2 of the Human Rights Act 1998 - the article notes areas in which the courts have been reluctant to adapt common law principles, as well as instances of common law protections exceeding those available under Article 6 ECHR. The article suggests that such lines of reasoning reveal a robustness within the common law that brings a multi-dimensional quality to the Human Rights Act 1998. It also suggests that such robustness can be analysed with reference to 'common law constitutionalism' and a corresponding imagery of 'dialogue' between the domestic courts and European Court of Human Rights.

Courts and Consociations: Human Rights versus Power-sharing

Consociations are power-sharing arrangements, increasingly used to manage ethno-nationalist, ethno-linguistic, and ethno-religious conflicts. Current examples include Belgium, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Burundi, and Iraq. Despite their growing popularity, they have begun to be challenged before human rights courts as being incompatible with human rights norms, particularly equality and non-discrimination.

Courts and Consociations examines the use of power-sharing agreements, their legitimacy, and their compatibility with human rights law. Key questions include to what extent, if any, consociations conflict with the liberal individualist preferences of international human rights institutions, and to what extent consociational power-sharing may be justified to preserve peace and the integrity of political settlements.

In three critical cases, the European Court of Human Rights has considered equality challenges to important consociational practices, twice in Belgium and then in Sejdic and Finci v Bosnia regarding the constitution established for Bosnia Herzegovina under the Dayton Agreement. The Court's decision in Sejdic and Finci has significantly altered the approach it previously took to judicial review of consociational arrangements in Belgium. This book accounts for this change and assess its implications. The problematic aspects of the current state of law are demonstrated. Future negotiators in places riven by potential or actual bloody ethnic conflicts may now have less flexibility in reaching a workable settlement, which may unintentionally contribute to sustaining such conflicts and make it more likely that negotiators will consider excluding regional and international courts from reviewing these political settlements.

Courts and Consociations:How human rights courts may destabilize power-sharing settlements

We consider the use of consociational arrangements to manage ethno-nationalist, ethno-linguistic, and ethno-religious conflicts, and their compatibility with non-discrimination and equality norms. Key questions include to what extent, if any, consociations conflict with the dictates of global justice and the liberal individualist preferences of international human rights institutions, and to what extent consociational power-sharing may be justified to preserve peace and the integrity of political settlements. In three critical cases, the European Court of Human Rights has considered equality challenges to important consociational practices, twice in Belgium and, most recently, in Sejdic and Finci, concerning the constitutional arrangements established for Bosnia Herzegovina under the Dayton Agreement. The Court’s recent decision in Sejdic and Finci has significantly altered the approach it previously took to judicial review of consociational arrangements in the Belgian cases. We seek to account for this change and assess its implications. We identify problematic aspects of the judgment and conclude that, although the Court’s decision indicates one possible trajectory of human rights courts’ reactions to consociations, this would be an unfortunate development because it leaves future negotiators in places riven by potential or manifest bloody ethnic conflicts with considerably less flexibility in reaching a settlement. That in turn may unintentionally contribute to sustaining such conflicts and make it more likely that advisors to negotiators will advise them to exclude regional and international courts from having standing in the management of political settlements.

Which is the Only Game in Town? Minority Rights Issues in Estonia and Slovakia During and after EU Accession:Perspectives on European Politics and Society

Post-communist transition went hand in hand with the European integration process. Much of the literature on EU accession focuses on the rational decision to implement a set of European norms into domestic legislation pre-accession. It is often concluded that once EU membership is achieved, states succumb their rationality and act on the basis of internalised norms. The paper claims that the past literature overlooks the wider framework within which policy-makers operate before and after the accession, namely domestic sovereignty over policy-making and implementation. Tracing the policy dynamics in the area of minority rights in Estonia and Slovakia, we demonstrate that the European integration ushered greater domestic control over policy implementation on minority issues in two states exposed to a heavy dose of conditionality. As we observe, both states have consolidated their state- and nation-building policies referencing EU conditionality in the course of accession and later EU membership to assert centrality of domestic objectives for policy-making and implementation.

Civil society versus nationalizing state?:Advocacy of minority rights in the post-socialist Baltic states

Strong civil society provides individuals with arenas to bring their interests to the attention of policymakers. In so doing, civil society organizations (CSOs) can support state policies, but can also criticize policies. This paper argues that most minority rights advocacy CSOs in the Baltic states have little say in the crafting of policy and are compartmentalized into the existing agendas, with only a few groups able to evaluate policies independently. It concludes that the Baltic civil society is weak because the CSOs working on minority issues ask policymakers either too much, or too little. The findings suggest that policymakers quell criticism of their work from the side of the CSOs by ignoring their activities. Alternatively, by funding the CSO that shores up the state agenda, policymakers delegate their responsibilities to civic actors, keep critical voices from public debates and claim that their policies have the full support of a vibrant civil society. This paper investigates the options available for civil society actors to relate to policymakers in a nationalizing state by drawing on the data collected in 77 semi-structured interviews with the CSOs working with Russian and Polish minorities in the Baltic states between 2006 and 2009. © 2011 Association for the Study of Nationalities.

Human Rights and the United Kingdom Supreme Court

After setting the scene by explaining the constraints which are placed on the Justices of the UK Supreme Court, this book considers how human rights are conceptualized by the Court in general and how in particular the procedural questions thrown up by the Human Rights Act have been dealt with so far. It then examines on a right-by-right basis the Justices' position on all the European Convention rights and some additional international human rights standards incorporated into UK law.

Human Rights in Northern Ireland in 2011

This chapter surveys and comments on the developments in the legal protection of human rights in Northern Ireland during the year 2011.

Understanding Parental Influence on Educational Outcomes Among 9 Year Olds in Ireland: The Mediating Role of Resources, Attitudes and Children's Own Perspectives

The relationship between parental background and children's educational outcomes has been a dominant theme within the sociology of education. There has been an on-going debate as to the relative merits of explanations which focus on the role of socio-cultural reproduction and those which focus on rational choice. However, many empirical studies within the social stratification tradition fail to allow for children's own agency in shaping the relationship between social background and schooling outcomes. This paper draws on the first wave of a large-scale longitudinal study of over 8,000 nine-year-old children in Ireland, which combines information from parents, school principals, teachers and children themselves. Both social class and parental education are found to have significant effects on reading and mathematics test scores among nine year olds. These effects are partly mediated by home-based educational resources and activities, parents' educational expectations for their child, and parents' formal involvement in the school. More importantly, children's own engagement with, and attitudes to, school significantly influence their academic performance. The influence of children's own attitudes and actions can thus reinforce or mitigate the effect of social background factors. The analysis therefore provides a bridge between the large body of research on the intergenerational transmission of inequality and the emerging research and policy literature on children's rights.