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Full-Text Articles in Law

Hope And Despair For A New South Africa: The Limits Of Rights Discourse, Makau Wa Mutua Jan 1997

Hope And Despair For A New South Africa: The Limits Of Rights Discourse, Makau Wa Mutua

Journal Articles

This article is a critique of the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa. It explores the assumptions employed by the African National Congress and the international community to construct a post-apartheid society. It argues that the reliance on the law as the key medium for economic, social, and political change was insufficient to transform the legacy of apartheid. Instead, the piece contends that apartheid was privatized and its beneficiaries protected under the new dispensation. It makes the argument that the lot of the black majority is unlikely to be changed such gradualist approach to social change.


The Politics Of Human Rights: Beyond The Abolitionist Paradigm In Africa (Review Essay), Makau Wa Mutua Jan 1996

The Politics Of Human Rights: Beyond The Abolitionist Paradigm In Africa (Review Essay), Makau Wa Mutua

Book Reviews

Review of Claude E. Welch, Protecting Human Rights in America: Strategies and Roles of Non-Governmental Organizations (1995).


The Ideology Of Human Rights, Makau Wa Mutua Jan 1996

The Ideology Of Human Rights, Makau Wa Mutua

Journal Articles

This piece argues that although human rights is an ideology although it presents itself as non-ideological, non-partisan, and universal. It contends that the human rights corpus, taken as a whole, as a document of ideals and values, particularly the positive law of human rights, requires the construction of states to reflect the structures and values of governance that derive from Western liberalism, especially the contemporary variations of liberal democracy practiced in Western democracies. Viewed from this perspective, the human rights regime has serious and dramatic implications for questions of cultural diversity, the sovereignty of states, and the universality of human …


The Banjul Charter And The African Cultural Fingerprint: An Evaluation Of The Language Of Duties, Makau Wa Mutua Jan 1995

The Banjul Charter And The African Cultural Fingerprint: An Evaluation Of The Language Of Duties, Makau Wa Mutua

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.


Conflicting Conceptions Of Human Rights: Rethinking The African Post-Colonial State, Makau Wa Mutua Jan 1995

Conflicting Conceptions Of Human Rights: Rethinking The African Post-Colonial State, Makau Wa Mutua

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.


Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again: The Dilemmas Of The Post-Colonial African State (Review Essay), Makau Wa Mutua Jan 1995

Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again: The Dilemmas Of The Post-Colonial African State (Review Essay), Makau Wa Mutua

Book Reviews

Reviewing Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, I. William Zartman, ed.


New Challenges To Southern Africa: From Regional Conflict To Internal Reconstruction, Makau Wa Mutua Jan 1995

New Challenges To Southern Africa: From Regional Conflict To Internal Reconstruction, Makau Wa Mutua

Journal Articles

With the possible exception of the Horn of Africa, arguably no other African region has been subject to multiple traumas such as those endured by Southern Africa. From the brutal Portuguese colonization to the vicious civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, not to mention the ravages of apartheid in South Africa and Namibia, the last four hundred years have seen sheer brutality of man over fellow man. Since 1990, however, there has been a steady reversal of the conditions that have historically caused violence in the region. In this article, the author examines this legacy and the struggle to construct …


Human Rights And State Despotism In Kenya: Institutional Problems, Makau Wa Mutua Oct 1994

Human Rights And State Despotism In Kenya: Institutional Problems, Makau Wa Mutua

Other Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Case For Self-Determination, Guyora Binder Jan 1992

The Case For Self-Determination, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

This lecture offers an analysis and defense of the right of self-determination of peoples. The argument begins by analyzing self-determination into its universalist and nationalist components. The universalist component of self-determination is satisfied wherever institutions of government are majoritarian. The nationalist component of self-determination is satisfied to the extent that institutions of government are identified with particular communities. The universalist compoent is now widely recognized as an authoritative principle of international law. The nationalist component remains controversial, particularly outside of the particular context of the dismantling of European colonial empires. The lecture proceeds to defend the nationalist component by attacking …