Law Commons^™

Forum Shopping For Human Rights, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

The article analyzes a growing trend in international human rights law: the submission of petitions by aggrieved individuals to multiple human rights courts, tribunals, or treaty bodies, each of which is authorized to review the petition and to determine whether the individuals? rights have been violated. Most commentators have viewed this practice of "forum shopping for human rights" as a danger to be avoided. This article questions that conventional wisdom and offers in its place a re-envisioning of the human rights petition system. Although efficiency, finality and other concerns weigh against some varieties of duplicative review, this article argues that …