This book challenges several traditional assumptions concerning human rights. In particular it challenges the presumption that the fundamental rights and freedoms contained in the European Convention on Human Rights are irrelevant for cases which concern the sphere of relations betweenindividuals. It asks whether victims should be protected from non-state actors, and attempts to develop a coherent approach to `human rights in the private sphere'. This study concentrates on the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights, and their enforcement in the courts ofthe United Kingdom and at the European level; at the European Commission and Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. In addition, some constitutional cases are examined from the United States and Canadian legal orders. The application ofinternational human rights law to the private sphere has implications for the worlds of labour relations, race relations, discrimination and violence against women, and for victims of indignities everywhere. This study shows that respect for privacy need not mean excluding wrongs in the privatesphere from the world of human rights.

Part Part I: Introduction -- chapter PART I: INTRODUCTION Human Rights and the Private Sphere - the Scope of the Project -- part Part II: National Jurisdictions European Convention on Human Rights -- chapter 1 Denmark Drittwirkung and Conflicting Rights - Viewed from National and International Perspectives -- chapter 2 England and Wales The Human Rights Act and the Private Sphere -- chapter 3 France Horizontal Application and the Triumph of the European Convention on Human Rights -- chapter 4 Germany Drittwirkung in Germany -- chapter 5 Greece Taking Private Law Seriously in the Application of Constitutional Rights -- chapter 6 India Protection of Human Rights against State and Non-State Action -- chapter 7 Ireland Irish Constitutional Law and Direct Horizontal Effect - A Successful Experiment? -- chapter 8 Israel Human Rights in Private Law - The Israeli Case -- chapter 9 Italy The Protection of Constitutional Rights in the Private Sphere -- chapter 10 New Zealand Taking Human Rights into the Private Sphere -- chapter 11 South Africa From Indirect to Direct Effect in South Africa: a System in Transition -- chapter 12 Spain A Jurisdiction Recognising the Direct Horizontal Application of Human Rights -- chapter 13 The United States and Canada: State Action, Constitutional Rights and Private Actors -- chapter 14 The European Convention on Human Rights The European Court of Human Rights.

Particularly valuable for both academics and practitioners, Human Rights and the Private Sphere: A Comparative Study analyzes the interaction between constitutional rights, freedoms and private law. Focusing primarily on civil and political rights, an international team of constitutional and private law experts have contributed a collection of chapters, each based around a different jurisdiction. They include Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, the UK, the US, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the European Union. As well as exploring, chapter by chapter, the key topics and debates in each jurisdiction, a comparative analysis draws the sections together; setting-out the common features and differences in the jurisdictions under review and identifies some common trends in this important area of the law. Cross-references between the various chapters and an appendix containing relevant legislative material and translated quotations from important court decisions makes this volume a valuable tool for those studying and working in the field of international human rights law.

This book describes an emotional territory, which forms the individual's own sphere of action and experience. This develops in the course of evolution in pace with the individual's conditions of life, brought about by challenges in the natural and social environment.

Table of National Legislation

This book develops an analysis of the historical, political and legal contexts behind current demands by NGOs and the United Nations Human Rights Council to hold corporations accountable for their human rights violations. Based on an analysis of the range of mechanisms of accountability that currently exist, it argues that that those demands are a response to the failure of neo-liberal policies that have dominated the practice of politics and law since the emergence of this debate in its current form in the 1970s. Offering a new approach to understanding how struggles for hegemony are refracted through a range of legal challenges to corporate human rights violations, the book offers a fresh perspective for understanding how those struggles are played out in the global sphere. In order to analyse the prospects for using human rights law to challenge the right of corporations to author human rights violations, the book explores the development of a range of political initiatives in the UN, the uses of tort law in domestic courts, and the uses of human rights law at the European Court of Human Rights and at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. This book will be essential reading for all those interested in how international institutions and NGOs are both shaping and being shaped by global struggles against corporate power.