New Books in Human Rights

Over the past decade, Poland and Hungary have become laboratories for a new kind of government: proto-authoritarian regimes that still have regular elections, vibrant oppositions and are externally constrained by EU law and potential loss of fiscal transfers.Viktor Orbán, Hungary's prime minister since 2010, especially has generated a comprehensive academic literature attempting to understand the special nature of his regime. Two earlier podcasts with András Körösényi and Gábor Scheiring about their efforts to classify Orbánism can be found in the NBN library and a conversation Lasse Skytt about his new edition of Orbanland (New Europe Books, 2021) is coming soon.In their new book - Illiberal Constitutionalism in Poland and Hungary: The Deterioration of Democracy, Misuse of Human Rights and Abuse of the Rule of Law (Routledge, 2021) - Professors Drinóczi and Bień-Kacała redefine the models of government practised by Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński. By examining Polish and Hungarian history, identity, and political and legal systems, as well as the influence of European rule of law, they alight on what they believe is a new political phenomenon: illiberal constitutionalism.Agnieszka Bień-Kacała (a Pole) teaches law at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and Tímea Drinóczi (a Hungarian) teaches law at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil.*The authors' own book recommendations are Poland's Constitutional Breakdown by Wojciech Sadurski (OUP Oxford, 2019) and Democratic Decline in Hungary Law and Society in an Illiberal Democracy by András László Pap (Routledge, 2017).Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley advisors (a division of Energy Aspects). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the next four weeks, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts exploring the role that research plays in understanding and advocating for human rights in Southeast Asia. To kick off the series, Dr Thushara Dibley is joined by Human Rights Watch Australia Director Elaine Pearson to discuss the interactions and tensions between academic research and investigation of human rights abuses conducted by human rights advocacy groups such as Human Rights Watch. Elaine Pearson gives an insight into some of the work conducted by Human Rights Watch across the region, highlighting the core role of research not just in understanding the problem, but in informing their advocacy approach to maximise impact. Together they reflect upon the different goals, methodological approaches, and challenges encountered by researchers, and delve into the ways that advocacy groups can break silos between academic research and real-world problems to progress human rights.About Elaine Pearson:Elaine Pearson is the Australia Director at Human Rights Watch, based in Sydney. She established Human Rights Watch’s Australia office in 2013 and works to influence Australian foreign and domestic policies in order to give them a human rights dimension. Pearson writes frequently for a range of publications and her articles have appeared in the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, Foreign Policy and the Washington Post. From 2007 to 2012 she was the Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division based in New York. She has conducted numerous human rights investigations in Australia and around the world.Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Pearson worked for the United Nations and various non-governmental organizations in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Kathmandu and London. She is an adjunct lecturer in law at the University of New South Wales, on the advisory committee of UNSW’s Australian Human Rights Institute and on the board of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women. Pearson holds degrees in law and arts from Murdoch University and obtained her Master's degree in public policy at Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs.For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stigma about mental illness makes life doubly hard for people suffering from mental or emotional distress. In addition to dealing with their conditions, they must also contend with social shame and secrecy. But by examining how mental illness is conceived of and treated in other cultures, we can improve our own perspectives in the Western world. In his new book, Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness (Norton, 2021), anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker offers a critique of our current mental health system based on cross-cultural observations as well as suggestions for improving upon it. In our interview, we talk about the impact of stigma on mental health treatment and his ideas about where it comes from. He also explains why he feels optimistic about recent trends in the way individuals speak about their mental health challenges.Roy Richard Grinker is professor of anthropology and international affairs at George Washington University. His specialties include ethnicity, nationalism, and psychological anthropology, with topical expertise in autism, Korea, and sub-Saharan Africa. He is also the director of George Washington University’s Institute for Ethnographic Research and editor-in-chief of the journal Anthropological Quarterly. He is author of several books, including Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism. He lives in Washington, DC.Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute in Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology in New York City and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group; and faculty at Florida Psychoanalytic Institute in Miami. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (2018, Routledge) and has published on issues of gender, sexuality, and sexual abuse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Obligations: New Trajectories in Law (Routledge, 2021) critically analyses the role that obligations play in law and social ordering. As rights have become preeminent feature in modern societies, the work that obligations do has faded into the background. However, in his latest book, Professor Scott Veitch challenges the normative assumptions that shape law and social practices, and shows how obligations and practices of obedience are core to sustaining the inequalities faced by members of the global community. In doing so, Veitch explores the potential and enduring role that obligations have in furthering individual and collective well-being. He offers an alternative trajectory for the current crises faced by all citizens today, including environmental degradation and human inequality and injustice. This is an important book. It will allow the reader to rethink the dominant model of human rights, and enable understandings of alternative complementary trajectories of obligations. An understanding of the universalism of obligations and the asymmetries and obediences that obligations create has the potential to better prioritise human and environmental needs, common goods, and solidarity. Professor Scott Veitch is the Paul K C Chung Professor in Jurisprudence in the Department of Law at the University of Hong Kong. He was educated in Scotland and has worked at universities in Australia and the United Kingdom, and was formerly Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Glasgow. He has held visiting academic positions in South Africa, New Zealand, Belgium, France and the Basque country. His area of research is jurisprudence broadly defined, and his work draws on historical, philosophical and sociological insights into law and legal institutions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Catholic Greg Bourke's profoundly moving memoir about growing up gay and overcoming discrimination in the battle for same-sex marriage in the US. In this compelling and deeply affecting memoir, Greg Bourke recounts growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, and living as a gay Catholic. Gay, Catholic, and American: My Legal Battle for Marriage Equality and Inclusion (U Notre Dame Press, 2021) describes Bourke's early struggles for acceptance as an out gay man living in the South during the 1980s and '90s, his unplanned transformation into an outspoken gay rights activist after being dismissed as a troop leader from the Boy Scouts of America in 2012, and his historic role as one of the named defendants in the landmark United States Supreme Court decision Obergefell vs. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015. After being ousted by the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), former Scoutmaster Bourke became a leader in the movement to amend antigay BSA membership policies. The Archdiocese of Louisville, because of its vigorous opposition to marriage equality, blocked Bourke's return to leadership despite his impeccable long-term record as a distinguished boy scout leader. But while making their home in Louisville, Bourke and his husband Michael DeLeon have been active members at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church for more than three decades, and their family includes two adopted children who attended Lourdes school and were brought up in the faith. Over many years and challenges, this couple has managed to navigate the choppy waters of being openly gay while integrating into the fabric of their parish life community. Bourke is unapologetically Catholic, and his faith provides the framework for this inspiring story of how the Bourke DeLeon family struggled to overcome antigay discrimination by both the BSA and the Catholic Church and fought to legalize same-sex marriage across the country. Gay, Catholic, and American is an illuminating account that anyone, no matter their ideological orientation, can read for insight. It will appeal to those interested in civil rights, Catholic social justice, and LGBTQ inclusion.Author: Greg Bourke has had a long corporate career in information technology and management. He currently works as a health economist. Bourke and his husband, Michael De Leon, were named 2015 Persons of the Year by the National Catholic Reporter and have been active in establishing LGBTQ alumni networks at the University of Notre Dame, University of Louisville, University of Kentucky, and other organizations.John Marszalek III is author of Coming Out of the Magnolia Closet: Same-Sex Couples in Mississippi (2020, University Press of Mississippi). He is clinical faculty of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Southern New Hampshire University. Website: Johnmarszalek3.com. Twitter: @marsjf3 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Religious liberty” is a phrase that we often hear, particularly in news stories revolving around Supreme Court decisions. But what is religious liberty and why is it often referred to as “the first liberty?”These are among the questions addressed in Kenneth Starr’s 2021 book, Religious Liberty in Crisis: Exercising Your Faith in an Age of Uncertainty (Encounter, 2021)Although Judge Starr possesses impeccable scholarly credentials, the book is intended for general readers. It is an informative blend of American legal and constitutional history and a primer for all of us about a crucial component of our set of rights as citizens.Even if you are not religious, the book will endow you with a greater understanding of an issue that frequently roils the body politic and that is both timeless and of ongoing concern. Think Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission—decided by the Supreme Court in 2018.Luckily, we have with us today one of America’s leading lawyers to walk us through the fascinating history of religious liberty and give us the lowdown on what we need to know should we find ourselves facing a choice between honoring our sabbath day and keeping our jobs.Kenneth Starr has been a figure of great note on the American legal landscape for decades. He is perhaps best known for his role in the Whitewater investigation during the Clinton administration and as a key member of Donald Trump’s defense team in the latter’s first impeachment trial. He has been among other things, a federal judge at the highest levels, a law school dean and a university president.Most significantly in terms of the subject matter of his new book and thus the main focus of our interview, he is a long-time champion of religious liberty and, as solicitor general under George HW Bush, argued before the Supreme Court such notable religious liberty and freedom of speech cases as Westside Community Schools v. Mergens, in which the Supreme Court found that a Bible club has the same right of equal access on school grounds as any other student-led organization. Judge Starr employs that famous case to illustrate one of the concepts discussed in book, equality. It is a cause dear to his heart and probably even more so given own quite humble origins in his home state of Texas.The common man aspects of Starr’s background have enabled him to make this book approachable to its intended broad-ranging audience. Most of us at one time or another have found ourselves in school, work or business environments or simply driving along a highway and it is surprising how often questions involving religious liberty pop up for average people in such settings.Starr guides the reader engagingly and expertly through such questions as:What is the Lemon Test? What do you need to know about religious liberty as a parent, public school or college student, teacher, small business owner or employee? How have wedding cakes, monuments in the shape of Christian crosses, public displays of the Ten Commandments on government property, and government-subsidized school bus rides played into all of this? What is “accommodation” in this context and when might you need to seek one and what should you do if you are denied it? What is the relationship between free speech and religious liberty?We welcome Judge Starr, a Christian gentleman of the first order.Give a listen.Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mental Capacity in Relationship: Decision-Making, Dialogue, and Autonomy (Cambridge University Press, 2017), challenges the current legal landscape of mental capacity law and human rights legislation, arguing that assessments of mental capacity should take account the role of relationships in the decision-making capacity of individuals with impairments and mental disorders. Dr. Camillia Kong's is an interdisciplinary exploration, combining philosophy, legal analysis on the law of England and Wales, the European Convention of Human Rights, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Kong defends a concept of mental capacity, but one which at times provides scope for justifiable interventions into disabling relationships. The implications of Kong's hypothesis are groundbreaking; she provides a framework which articulates the practice of capacity assessments to help to better situate, interpret, and understand the decisions and actions of people with impairments. This monograph is the basis of another publication (co-written with Alex Ruck Keene) Overcoming Challenges in the Mental Capacity Act 2005: Practical Guidance for Working with Complex Issues (Jessica Kingsley, 2018). You can listen to that interview with Dr. Kong and Ruck-Keene here.Dr Camillia Kong is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Crime & Justice, Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London. She is the Principal Investigator of Judging Values and Participation in Mental Capacity Law.Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Children have the right to be raised by both their mother and father. That used to be a noncontroversial idea. But no longer.In their eye-opening 2021 book, Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children's Rights Movement (Post Hill Press, 2021), Katy Faust and Stacy Manning examine how children have been damaged by such developments as no-fault divorce, marriage equality, and the largely unregulated fields of surrogacy and in-vitro-fertilization.They argue that in the quest for the satisfaction of the desires of adults (the “Us” of the title), children (the “Them” of the title) have been treated as afterthoughts and made into tiny cheerleaders for lifestyles that have deprived the child of either a father or a mother by design.The authors quote extensively from a broad range of now adult children of same-sex couples, surrogacy and children of “donors” of sperm or eggs—which are not usually donated but bought and paid for. These personal testimonies are heartbreaking and expose the cost to the children of these arrangements and technologies.One example from a woman conceived via egg donation:It bothers me that I cost money, that the one woman I want most in this life is a stranger yet 50 percent of me. Sometimes I wish I weren’t born. I didn’t ask for this, and I never would have consented to it.The child of a male same-sex couple says:My five-year-old brain could not understand why I didn’t have the mom that I suddenly desperately wanted. I felt the loss. I felt the hole. As I grew, I tried to fill that hole with aunts, my dads’ lesbian friends, and teachers. I remember asking my first-grade teacher if I could call her Mom. I asked that question of any woman who showed me any amount of love and affection. It was instinctive. I craved a mother’s love even though I was well loved by my two gay dads.This is an invaluable, gripping record in their own words of the trauma inflicted on children of this brave new world. They are moving documents that show the dark side of social and scientific changes that are often lauded as utterly desirable and unproblematic.Faust and Manning detail the repercussions of three categories of intentional parental loss: children who experienced divorce and abandonment, children with LGBT parents, and children born of surrogacy and via sperm and/or egg donation. They point out, for example, the startling contrast between adoption (heavily regulated) and surrogacy (basically, shockingly unregulated).This is an expose of historic importance. It should be read by anyone interested in the fields of bioethics, sociology, psychology, child development, law, public policy, gender studies and concerned about the fate of children born of reproductive technologies or raised intentionally without a mother or a father. The ramifications of these vast and sudden changes have not been addressed sufficiently or candidly outside of conservative scholarly circles.A crucial readership for this book is that of would-be parents considering having children outside of a traditional marriage or producing children via sperm or egg donation. Read what the children of such arrangements say of their lifelong pain and feelings of loss before you rush into a parenthood that cannot take place without intentional biological parent deprivation.We’ll talk today with Katy Faust, the founder and director of Them Before Us and the co-author of this important book about the rights of children.Give a listen.Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Worlding Postcolonial Sexualities: Publics, Counterpublics, Human Rights (Routledge, 2021) demonstrates how late twentieth century postcolonial print cultures initiated a public discourse on sexual activism and contends that postcolonial feminist and queer archives offer alternative histories of sexual precarity, vulnerability, and resistance.The book's comparative focus on India, Jamaica, and South Africa extends the valences of postcolonial feminist and queer studies towards a historical examination of South-South interactions in the theory and praxis of sexual rights. Analyzing the circumstances of production and the contents of English-language and intermittently bilingual magazines and newsletters published between the late 1970s and the late 1990s, these sources offer a way to examine the convergences and divergences between postcolonial feminist, gay, and lesbian activism. It charts a set of concerns common to feminist, gay, and lesbian activist literature: retrogressive colonial-era legislation impacting the status of women and sexual minorities; a marked increase in sexual violence; piecemeal reproductive freedoms and sexual choice under neoliberalism; the emergence and management of the HIV/AIDS crisis; precariousness of lesbian and transgender concerns within feminist and LGBTQ+ movements; and Non-Governmental Organizations as major actors articulating sexual rights as human rights. This methodologically innovative work is based on archival historical research, analyses of national and international policy documents, close readings of activist publications, and conversations with activists and founding editors.This is an important intervention in the field of gender and sexuality studies and is the winner of the 2020 Feminist Futures, Subversive Histories prize in partnership with the NWSA. The book is key reading for scholars and students in gender, sexuality, comparative literature, and postcolonial studies.Rachel Stuart is a sex work researcher whose primary interest is the lived experiences of sex workers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We often talk as if individuals have entitlements to certain kinds of information: medical test results, political representatives’ voting records, crime statistics, and the like. We also talk as if these entitlements entail duties on the part of others to provide the relevant information. Moreover, we talk as if the individual’s entitlement to information also entails a range of protections against misinformation, deception, and the like.Despite the fact that these ideas are common, there is surprisingly little in the philosophical literature about the nature and contours of the relevant entitlements. In her new book, The Right to Know: Epistemic Rights and Why We Need Them (Routledge, 2021), Lani Watson seeks to remedy this. She develops a conception of epistemic rights – a distinct class entitlements which nonetheless fits neatly into the existing landscape of rights theory. Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices