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Reading List


  • Agbakwa, Shedrack C. "Reclaiming Humanity: Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights as the Cornerstone of African Human Rights." Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, 5 (2002): 177-216.
  • Alston, Philip G., 'United-Nations Specialized Agencies and Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.' Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 18: 1, (1979).
  • Arendt, Hannah, The Paradox of Human Rights, in Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, 1951.
  • ----, ‘The Social Question’ in On Revolution, London, 1963.
  • Baderin, Mashood, and Robert McCorquodale. Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Action. Oxford, 2007.
  • Baldwin, Peter. Disease and Democracy: The Industrialized World Faces AIDS. Berkeley, 2006.
  • Barak-Erez, Daphne, and Aeyal Gross, eds. Exploring Social Rights: Between Theory and Practice. Oxford, 2011.
  • Barnett, Michael. Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism. Ithaca, 2011.
  • Bornstein, Erica, Disquieting Gifts: Humanitarianism in New Delhi. Stanford, 2012.
  • Buchanan, Tom, ‘”The Truth Will Set You Free”: The Making of Amnesty International’, Journal of Contemporary History, 37: 4 (2002).
  • Cmiel, Kenneth. "A Recent History of Human Rights." American Historical Review (February 2004).
  • Cottereau, Alain, ‘Droit et bon droit. Un droit des ouvriers instauré, puis évincé par le droit du travail’, Annales, 57: 6 (2002).
  • Ferguson, James. Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution. Duke, 2015.
  • Feyter, Koen de. Human Rights: Social Justice in the Age of the Market. London: Zed Books, 2005.
  • Flood, Colleen M., and Aeyal Gross, eds. The Right to Health at the Public/Private Divide: A Global Comparative Study. Cambridge, 2014.
  • Foucault, Michel, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-79. New York, 2007.
  • ibid., Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977-1978. New York, 2007.
  • Gauchet, Marcel. La Révolution Des Droits De L'homme. Notes. Paris, 1989.
  • Glendon, Mary Ann. A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New York, 2001.
  • Hoffmann, Stefan-Ludwig, ed. Human Rights in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, 2010.
  • Howard-Hassmann, Rhoda E. Can Globalization Promote Human Rights? Philadelphia, 2010.
  • Huisman, Frank and Oosterhuis, Harry (eds.). Health and Citizenship: Political Cultures of Health in Modern Europe. London, 2013.
  • Hunt, Lynn. Inventing Human Rights: A History. New York, 2007.
  • Irvine, William D. Between Justice and Politics: The Ligue Des Droits De L'homme, 1898-1945. Stanford, 2007.
  • Jensen, Steven L. B. The Making of International Human Rights. The 1960s, Decolonization, and the Reconstruction of Global Values. Cambridge, 2016.
  • Kaisary, Philip, ‘Hercules, the Hydra, and the 1801 Constitution of Toussaint Louverture’, Atlantic Studies, 12: 4 (2015).
  • Kessler-Harris, Alice and Vaudagna, Maurizio (eds.). Democracy and Social Rights in the 'Two Wests'. Turin, 2009.
  • Kinley, David. Civilising Globalisation: Human Rights and the Global Economy. Cambridge, 2009.
  • Klose, Fabian, ed. The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention. Cambridge, 2014.
  • Klose, Fabian and Thulin, Mirjam, eds. Humanity. A History of European Concepts in Practice From the Sixteenth Century to the Present. Göttingen, 2016.
  • Krynen, Jacques, ‘The Absolute Monarchy and the French Unification of Private Rights’ in Kulius Kirshner and Laurent Mayali, Privileges and Rights of Citizenship: Law and the Juridical Construction of Civil Society, Berkeley, 2002.
  • Langford, Malcolm. Social Rights Jurisprudence : Emerging Trends in International and Comparative Law. Cambridge, 2008.
  • Lemke, Thomas, Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction. New York and London 2011.
  • Marks, Susan. "Human Rights and Root Causes." Modern Law Review 74, no. 1 (2011).
  • Mathiez, Albert. "La Constitution de 1793." Annales historiques de la Révolution française (1928).
  • Małgorzata Mazurek, Paul Betts et al, Humanity vol 3 no. 3 (2012), issue devoted to socioeconomic rights.
  • Moyn, Samuel. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Cambridge, Mass., 2010.
  • Moyn, Samuel. Human Rights and the Uses of History. New York, 2014.
  • Moyn, Samuel. Christian Human Rights. Philadelphia, 2015.
  • Nolan, Aoife, ed. Economic and Social Rights after the Global Financial Crisis. Cambridge, 2014.
  • Nolan, Aoife, O'Connel, Rory and Harvey, Colin, eds. Human Rights and Public Finance
    Budgets and the Promotion of Economic and Social Rights. Oxford, 2013.
  • O'Connell, Paul. "The Death of Socio-Economic Rights." Modern Law Review 74, no. 4 (2011) and Vindicating Socio-Economic Rights: International Standards and Comparative Experiences. London, 2012.
  • Paulmann, Johannes. ‘Conjunctures in the History of Humanitarian Aid during the Twentieth Century’. Humanity 4: 2 (2013).
  • Rosental, Paul-André with Stéphane Buzzi and Jean-Claude Devinck, Santé au travail, Paris, 2006.
  • Saul, B., D. Kinley, and J. Mowbray, eds. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Commentary, Cases and Materials. Oxford, 2014.
  • Simms, Brendan, and D. J. B. Trim, eds. Humanitarian Intervention: A History. Cambridge, 2011.
  • Slim, Hugo, ‘Not Philanthropy But Rights: The Proper Politicisation of Humanitarian Philosophy’, International Journal of Human Rights, 6: 2 (2010)
  • Stein, Claudia. 'The Birth of Biopower in Eighteenth-century Germany', Medical History 55:3 (2011).
  • Thompson, Noel. The Real Rights of Man: Political Economies for the Working Class, 1775-1850. London, 1998.
  • Van Beuren, ‘Socio-economic rights and a Bill of Rights - an overlooked British tradition’, Public Law (2013)
  • Walton, Charles. 'Révolution et Redistribution: Réflexions sur la France et l'Egypte', La Vie des Idées, 23 April 2013; ‘Les graines de la discorde: Print, Public Spirit and Free-Market Politics in the French Revolution’, in Walton (ed.), Into Print: Limits and Legacies of the Enlightenment, University Park, 2011.