Over the past two decades, human rights as legal doctrine and practice has shifted its engagement with criminal law from a near exclusive condemnation of it as a source of harm toward increasingly invoking it as a necessary remedy for abuses. These shifts are most visible in the context of sexuality, reproduction, and gender.
A new book, Beyond Virtue and Vice: Rethinking Human Rights and the Criminal Law, edited by GHJP Co-Director Alice M. Miller and Mindy J. Roseman, Director of International Programs and Director of the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women’s Rights examines the ways in which recourse to the criminal law features in work by human rights advocates regarding sexuality, gender, and reproduction and presents a framework for considering if, when, and under what conditions, recourse to criminal law is compatible with human rights.
