Adaptive and Resilient Movements: In a new book, Gráinne de Búrca offers reasons to be optimistic about the future of human rights efforts
Even many progressive scholars tend to be pessimistic these days regarding the efficacy of human rights law and organizations, notes Gráinne de Búrca, Florence Ellinwood Allen Professor of Law. As she points out in her new book,
The Endtimes of Human Rights.
The Twilight of Human Rights Law.
Not Enough.
Gráinne de Búrca
De Búrca, who does not share that grim outlook, set out to write a corrective account of the state of the human rights movement. The work was inspired by a notion of experimentalist governance that she has previously written about in the context of the European Union system, and has been developing with social scientists. Essentially, the idea is that a multilevel system of government can be broadly interactive among its various levels and can create an effective system of governing without operating “top-down” or in a “command-and-control” way.