‘Framing the project’ of international human rights law: Reflections on the dysfunctional ‘family’ of the Universal Declaration

Grear, Anna

‘Framing the project’ of international human rights law: Reflections on the dysfunctional ‘family’ of the Universal Declaration

dc.contributor.author	Grear, Anna
dc.date.accessioned	2013-06-06T03:02:03Z
dc.date.available	2013-12-01T20:28:28Z
dc.date.issued	2012
dc.description	Full text embargoed until November 2013.
dc.description.abstract	The task of ‘framing the project’ of international human rights law is daunting to say the least. First, there is the sheer enormity and complexity of the international human rights law ‘project’: adequately mapping the subject and its key related issues is impossible in a whole book, let alone a short chapter. Secondly, it is daunting because of the sense of epistemic responsibility involved. Every framing inevitably involves selection – if not pre-selection – through the conscious (and/or unconscious) placing of focus upon features or factors considered to be significant and/or valuable. As Gitlin puts it, framing is a way of choosing, underlining and presenting ‘what exists, what happens and what matters’. In this sense, the founding document (or as Entman might put it, the inaugural ‘communicating text’) of international human rights law (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UDHR) functions as a particularly potent form of framing, for it selects aspects of perceived reality, making them not just salient but symbolically central to the entire philosophical, moral, juridical order designated by the term ‘international human rights law’.	en_NZ
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf
dc.identifier.citation	Grear, A. (2012). ‘Framing the project’ of international human rights law: Reflections on the dysfunctional ‘family’ of the Universal Declaration. In C. Gearty & C. Douzinas (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights Law (pp.17-35). Cambridge University Press.	en_NZ
dc.identifier.isbn	978-1-107-01624-8
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10289/7684
dc.language.iso	en	en_NZ
dc.publisher	Cambridge University Press	en_NZ
dc.relation.uri	http://www.cambridge.org/asia/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9781107016248	en_NZ
dc.rights	© Cambridge University Press 2012. Used with permission.	en_NZ
dc.subject	law	en_NZ
dc.title	‘Framing the project’ of international human rights law: Reflections on the dysfunctional ‘family’ of the Universal Declaration	en_NZ
dc.type	Chapter in Book	en_NZ