The Role of Law in Human Rights Education
Suzanne Egan(Author)
Hart Publishing
Will be published approx. on 7. January 2027
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-1-5099-9361-1 (ISBN)
Description
This book demonstrates how legal knowledge is a vital, empowering tool in human rights education.
Despite the centrality of international human rights law to the global rights framework, its role in human rights education (HRE) - particularly in schools and community settings - has been sidelined, dismissed as either too technical or too politically problematic. This book challenges that marginalisation head-on. It examines how legal knowledge is framed, valued, or rejected in the theory and practice of HRE, engaging critically with the prevailing trends in the field: one that gestures toward law but avoids depth, and another that disavows law entirely in favour of culturally embedded alternatives.
Through a close reading of scholarship and policy, combined with insights from educational theory and socio-legal studies, the book argues for law's role as a form of "powerful knowledge" in HRE. It contends that access to and understanding of legal norms and mechanisms are not only essential for meaningful rights education but are themselves enabling rights in practice.
The book will be of interest to scholars and students of human rights, legal pedagogy, and education policy, as well as practitioners developing HRE programs. It offers a timely, nuanced intervention into a field grappling with deep epistemological and political tensions, and reasserts the value of law in the struggle for rights.
Despite the centrality of international human rights law to the global rights framework, its role in human rights education (HRE) - particularly in schools and community settings - has been sidelined, dismissed as either too technical or too politically problematic. This book challenges that marginalisation head-on. It examines how legal knowledge is framed, valued, or rejected in the theory and practice of HRE, engaging critically with the prevailing trends in the field: one that gestures toward law but avoids depth, and another that disavows law entirely in favour of culturally embedded alternatives.
Through a close reading of scholarship and policy, combined with insights from educational theory and socio-legal studies, the book argues for law's role as a form of "powerful knowledge" in HRE. It contends that access to and understanding of legal norms and mechanisms are not only essential for meaningful rights education but are themselves enabling rights in practice.
The book will be of interest to scholars and students of human rights, legal pedagogy, and education policy, as well as practitioners developing HRE programs. It offers a timely, nuanced intervention into a field grappling with deep epistemological and political tensions, and reasserts the value of law in the struggle for rights.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5099-9361-1 (9781509993611)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Suzanne Egan is Associate Professor at University College Dublin, Ireland.
Content
1. Introduction
2. The Right to Human Rights Education
3. The Nature of Law and Legal Literacy
4. Law as Powerful Knowledge in Human Rights Education
5. Analysing Law in Human Rights Education Through the Capabilities Lens
6. Ignorance of Law in Human Rights Education
7. Reconceptualising the Role of Law in Human Rights Education
2. The Right to Human Rights Education
3. The Nature of Law and Legal Literacy
4. Law as Powerful Knowledge in Human Rights Education
5. Analysing Law in Human Rights Education Through the Capabilities Lens
6. Ignorance of Law in Human Rights Education
7. Reconceptualising the Role of Law in Human Rights Education