Human Rights, State Compliance, and Social Change : Assessing National Human Rights Institutions

National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) - human rights commissions and ombudsmen - have gained recognition as a possible missing link in the transmission and implementation of international human rights norms at the domestic level. They are also increasingly accepted as important participants in global and regional forums where international norms are produced. By collecting innovative work from experts spanning international law, political science, sociology and human rights practice, this book critically examines the significance of this relatively new class of organizations. It focuses, in particular, on the prospects of these institutions to effectuate state compliance and social change. Consideration is given to the role of NHRIs in delegitimizing - though sometimes legitimizing - governments' poor human rights records and in mobilizing - though sometimes demobilizing - civil society actors. The volume underscores the broader implications of such cross-cutting research for scholarship and practice in the fields of human rights and global affairs in general.

Ryan Goodman is the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law and Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University Law School, and Professor of Politics and Professor of Sociology at NYU. He was previously the Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law and Director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School. His publications include International Human Rights in Context (with Henry Steiner and Philip Alston), Socializing States: Promoting Human Rights through International Law (with Derek Jinks) and Understanding Social Action, Promoting Human Rights (with Derek Jinks and Andrew Woods). Thomas Pegram is a Research Fellow at New York University School of Law with a focus on the interdisciplinary research of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) and international law, including human rights and humanitarian law. He was the NHRI Fellow of Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program from 2008 to 2009. His recent publications have appeared in Human Rights Quarterly, Oxford Development Studies and the Cambridge Journal of Latin American Studies.