Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Contributors
- 1 International Courts and Tribunals and the Rule of Law
- 2 American Public Opinion on International Courts and Tribunals
- 3 Arbitration and Avoidance of War: The Nineteenth-Century American Vision
- 4 The United States and the International Court of Justice: Coping with Antinomies
- 5 The U.S. Supreme Court and the International Court of Justice: What Does “Respectful Consideration” Mean?
- 6 U.S. Attitudes toward International Criminal Courts and Tribunals
- 7 The United States and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
- 8 From Paradox to Subsidiarity: The United States and Human Rights Treaty Bodies
- 9 The U.S. and International Claims and Compensation Bodies
- 10 Does the United States Support International Tribunals? The Case of the Multilateral Trade System
- 11 The United States and Dispute Settlement under the North American Free Trade Agreement: Ambivalence, Frustration, and Occasional Defiance
- 12 Dispute Settlement under NAFTA Chapter 11: A Response to the Critics in the United States
- 13 The United States and International Courts: Getting the Cost-Benefit Analysis Right
- Index
- References
8 - From Paradox to Subsidiarity: The United States and Human Rights Treaty Bodies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Contributors
- 1 International Courts and Tribunals and the Rule of Law
- 2 American Public Opinion on International Courts and Tribunals
- 3 Arbitration and Avoidance of War: The Nineteenth-Century American Vision
- 4 The United States and the International Court of Justice: Coping with Antinomies
- 5 The U.S. Supreme Court and the International Court of Justice: What Does “Respectful Consideration” Mean?
- 6 U.S. Attitudes toward International Criminal Courts and Tribunals
- 7 The United States and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
- 8 From Paradox to Subsidiarity: The United States and Human Rights Treaty Bodies
- 9 The U.S. and International Claims and Compensation Bodies
- 10 Does the United States Support International Tribunals? The Case of the Multilateral Trade System
- 11 The United States and Dispute Settlement under the North American Free Trade Agreement: Ambivalence, Frustration, and Occasional Defiance
- 12 Dispute Settlement under NAFTA Chapter 11: A Response to the Critics in the United States
- 13 The United States and International Courts: Getting the Cost-Benefit Analysis Right
- Index
- References
Summary
In the battle for democracy and human rights, words matter, but what we do matters much more.
It is frequently said that the United States has a paradoxical human rights policy. On the one hand, the United States embraces human rights principles as a founding national ideology and has supported the enhancement of human rights and democracy as a core premise of its foreign policy since the end of World War II, when it played a leading role in birthing the international human rights regime. Indeed, the promotion of human rights and democracy abroad is a central motivating tenet of U.S. foreign policy, manifested in the nation's extensive foreign assistance commitments, political and financial support of international human rights bodies, linking of bilateral aid to human rights improvements, and annual reporting on the human rights situation of 194 nations of the world. National public opinion polls, moreover, suggest that roughly eighty percent of Americans believe that human rights inhere in every human being, whether the government formally recognizes those rights or not. Equal numbers express not only their support for U.S. ratification of human rights treaties but also their belief that international supervision over those treaty commitments, by a court or other independent body, is necessary.
Yet despite strong external and internal human rights commitments, the United States has appeared to flinch, even recoil, when it comes to direct domestic application of human rights treaty norms, especially as those norms are interpreted by international supervisory bodies.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Sword and the ScalesThe United States and International Courts and Tribunals, pp. 210 - 296Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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