The International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL), founded in Paris in 1946 by a group of antifascist lawyers, has long been dismissed as a Soviet front organization. Yet, this characterization overlooks its complex and multifaceted history. This paper reassesses IADL’s first thirty years, exploring its origins, internal debates, and cross-border engagement. Drawing on archival records, this article argues that—despite a period of Communist influence—the IADL contributed to international legal and political discourse by advancing an original approach defined here as radical legal internationalism. Through this framework, IADL lawyers questioned Cold War ideological boundaries and brought into dialogue Communist, progressive, New Left, decolonial, and liberal rights traditions. The article also uncovers the IADL’s significant role in promoting international law and human rights through trial observation, UN advocacy, and missions of inquiry. In challenging the dominant account of the Left’s delayed and uneasy embrace of human rights, this article calls for a broader understanding of Cold War-era legal internationalism and highlights an alternative tradition of legal activism.

In line with Singapore’s vision of the separation of powers, the courts’ duty is primarily to give effect to domestic law; the political branches take the lead in engaging with international law. A study of Singapore’s interface with international law would therefore be incomplete were it to consider only the courts’ role and not the political branches’ model of international law as primarily a guarantor of Singapore’s sovereignty and standing as a participant on the international stage. The political branches have been circumspect in engaging with international law in other areas, such as human rights, preferring a specifically Singaporean vision of rights. A symmetry emerges: the courts and political branches engage strongly with sovereignty-related norms; take other areas of international law as inspiration for developing domestic law; and take human rights law seriously even as their fidelity is ultimately to a specifically Singaporean legal framework for rights protection.

Attention to human rights as a central pillar of global mental health work has shifted from a focus on the right to healthcare to a deeper examination of the quality of care received, and to the way in which people with mental health conditions are treated in all aspects of life. The QualityRights programme is the World Health Organization’s flagship guidance for promotion of rights-based approaches to mental healthcare, and a means of holding service providers to account for quality of care provided. A recent evaluation of the QualityRights e-training package demonstrates promising impact on attitude change of participants, raising the prospect of an efficient scale-up of efforts to improve dignity in services and reduce stigma and discrimination.

In a world grappling with escalating agrochemical pollution, this article explores the potential for shifting from a security-centric approach to a human rights-based approach to safeguard health, the environment, and biodiversity. By engaging with European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence related to environmental protection and climate change, the article critically assesses how to address state (in)action regarding pollutants such as pesticides through human rights litigation. In its analysis, the article highlights climate change litigation as a catalyst for change to assert states’ threefold obligations to respect, protect, and realize human rights. It concludes that the legal approaches developed in climate litigation – with regard to both procedural and substantive aspects – provide a strong basis for addressing the human rights impacts of agrochemical harm.

Strong constitutionalism usually conceives rights as instruments for protecting people. The problem with this conception is that it generates legal alienation, since it views people as passive recipients of protection, which is an exclusive matter for the state and, ultimately, for judicial review. In contrast, deliberative constitutionalism gives people an active role in deliberating about rights, among themselves as well as between them and the state. However, despite the development of deliberative constitutionalism, it is not yet clear what this view of rights requires of judicial review. Accordingly, this contribution to the Federal Law Review’s symposium issue on deliberative rights theory argues for deliberative judicial review, which is a form of judicial review that, by respecting and promoting democratic deliberation, offers better protection of rights, as well as greater impartiality and legitimacy. In support of this argument, the article first makes explicit that the guide that should orient judicial review is not deference or activism but rather democratic deliberation. Next it states that, from this guide, a form of judicial review should be inferred that is not merely substantial or merely procedural, but rather semiprocedural. It then argues that, notwithstanding contextual turns, weak constitutionalism combined with channels of social dialogue offers a better institutional basis for deliberative judicial review than strong constitutionalism. Lastly, it concludes that deliberative judicial review respects and contributes to articulating rights without legal alienation, i.e. through dialogue among all potentially affected persons.

This article explores how the new generation of legalistic autocrats consolidates power—not by committing mass human rights violations as a way of consolidating power as authoritarians of the twentieth century did, but instead by attacking checks and balances so that democratic institutions are weakened. Judges at transnational courts, faced with evidence of these attacks, are developing a jurisprudence through which they transform the vindication of individual rights into requirements that states maintain democratic structures. While it is not clear if this jurisprudence prevents backsliding, it may become useful as new democrats attempt to restore constitutional institutions using these decisions as guidelines for democratic reform. In doing so, new democrats would be giving meaning to the rule of law writ large.

It is a truism that legitimacy is relational inasmuch as an international institution’s legitimacy hinges on how it is perceived by relevant audiences. What is less discussed is that legitimation practices may have another strong relational dimension as well, in which institutions portray themselves as being related to respected others. While the idea that international institutions associate themselves with others to borrow their legitimacy is not new, it has not as yet been thoroughly theorised. This article therefore brings together insights from research on the legitimation of international institutions and relational sociology, as well as from related fields, to theorise the notion of ‘relational legitimation’. It also presents a case study on the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Based on qualitative content analysis of annual thematic reports, the paper suggests that relational legitimation is a common practice among the Special Procedures, and possibly also among other international institutions. It shows that relational legitimation relies on a number of different frames – alignment being the most important one – and that association is sought primarily with epistemic authorities, especially those from the West, and other ‘family members’.

The international solidarity principle is a crucial legal norm of international society. It helps guide state conduct and facilitate cooperation among international actors to respond to global challenges and uphold human rights. The European Union (EU) and its Member States have argued that their bilateral agreements with non-EU countries to prevent irregular migration to Europe is a demonstration of international solidarity that fulfils their obligations to asylum seekers and refugees. However, the EU’s interpretation of international solidarity in these arrangements has been contested. This article argues that the EU has strategically interpreted the international solidarity principle to fit in with, and complement, its migration deterrence policy framework. It posits that the EU’s interpretation abuses the international solidarity principle as it aims to separate the solidarity principle from the realisation of human rights, thereby hurting, instead of benefitting, asylum seekers and refugees. This article makes an important contribution to understanding how the solidarity principle is interpreted between EU and non-EU partners, and the intimate connection between solidarity and the realisation of human rights. More importantly, it demonstrates how the interpretation and evasion of the international solidarity principle has been shaped by, and shaped to fit, the EU’s migration externalisation policy framework.

This essay reveals the institutional dynamics of hard times in the issue area of human rights. I show that the human rights regime has developed innovative-yet-informal institutions like individuals-based coalitions for the international protection and progressive development of human rights. Yet, as these informal institutions function very much based on, first, the interpersonal relations among their members, and, second, legal instruments that require no further consent by states, the advocacy success of liberal human rights defenders has, in turn, provided a playbook for advocates and governments from the illiberal end of the ideology spectrum. In addition, new human rights advocates in the form of certain private law firms have entered the UN through their pro bono work. They promise valuable resources for a crisis-ridden system but often represent corporate clients with conflicts of interest. Given the imminent risk of ideological capture and illiberal interests in human rights paralyzing the system, I reemphasize the need for regulating access to the human rights global governance institutions.