Overview
""Lesbian and gay rights are human rights!"" Is this just a political slogan to be chanted outside legislatures? Or are there legal arguments to support the claim that the right to be free from sexual orientation discrimination is a human right? In particular, can national constitutions or international human rights treaties be interpreted as prohibiting discrimination against same-sex activity, gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals, and same-sex couples? Robert Wintemute attempts to answer these questions by examining three of the most commonly used arguments in favour of such an interpretation: sexual orientation is an ""immutable status"", sexual orientation is a ""fundamental choice"" (or part of ""privacy""), and sexual orientation discrimination is sex discrimination. To assess their merits, he looks at their relative success and failure in cases argued under three of the world's most influential human rights instruments: the United States Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He also considers the potential impact of the United Nations Human Rights Committee's recent interpretation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in Toonen v. Australia.
Full Product Details
Author: Robert Wintemute (Lecturer in Law, Lecturer in Law, King's College, London)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Imprint: Clarendon Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.60cm
, Height: 1.90cm
, Length: 23.30cm
Weight: 0.499kg
ISBN: 9780198264880
ISBN 10: 0198264887
Pages: 334
Publication Date: 06 February 1997
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
.,. makes a valuable contribution --Michigan Law Review<br>
'The chapters dealing with the various jurisdictions provide a succinct and useful compendium of the recent emerging jurisprudence mainly focusing upon litigation relating to gay men...Wintemute's scholarship draws attention to the importance of law in general and civil and human rights litigation in particular...Wintemute's book is a useful vehicle through which to problematize the law/politics binary.' 'ambitious, scholarly and meticulously referenced...Wintemute has produced a wide-ranging, extensively detailed and yet accessible piece of scholarship...As a source book for references Wintemute's work is to be particularly commended.' Public Law offers a comprehensive, item by item examination of legislation and case law Gay Times Because the legal status of gays remains a matter of hot controversy in the United States, the news about these foreign developments is important. For this reason, Robert Wintemute's Sexual Orientation and Human Rights makes a valuable contribution. It carefully surveys gay rights decisions under three major human rights instruments; I know of no comparative study in this area that is more thorough. The book is also, however, an essay in constructive legal theory. ... his work brings to its subject a rare combination of legal learning and moral insight which, quite apart from living up to its amibition of making a powerful case for legal measures against discrimination on grounds of sexuality, does much, and certainly more than it advertises itself as doing, to illuminate the structure, scope, and significance of anti-discrimination law as a whole.
Author Information
Robert Wintemute has been a Lecturer in the School of Law at King's College, University of London since 1991.
