Europe

There is a long history of laws responding to terrorism that have been utilized in the United Kingdom. This article outlines the important strands of development, including in the former colonies of the British Empire, in Ireland, and in mainland Britain itself. It offers an overview of contemporary legislation — the Terrorism Act 2000, the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 and the Terrorism Act 2006.

This article conducts a critical discourse analysis of the Hungarian government’s National Consultation campaign on ‘immigration and terrorism’ in early 2015. The analysis draws on a discourse-historical approach to illuminate how the language and contents of the consultation draw on the discursive and political repertoires of the post-2010 Orbán governments and how, at the same time, they are underpinned by particular elements in the history of migration and diversity in Hungary.

Translated by Assenka Oksiloff.

The essays explain the anti-democratic features and limits of Soviet-type totalitarian systems of power. They discuss such concepts as ideology, democracy, civil liberty, law and the state from a perspective which is radically different from that of people living in liberal western democracies. The authors also discuss the prospects for democratic change under totalitarian conditions. Steven Lukes' introduction provides an invaluable political and historical context for these writings.

This study was an elaboration of ideas he first proposed in 1933 in his address to the Fifth International Conference for the Unification of Penal Law (1933), which argued that attacks on racial, religious and ethnic groups should be considered international crimes. Important for the prosecution of the Nazis, it helped to establish the framework for all subsequent efforts to punish crimes against humanity.

The issue of racist or hate speech engages both Article 10 and Article 17 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The early admissibility decisions of the Commission, invoking Article 17 alone, or Article 10 in conjunction with Article 17, reflected a confused understanding of the relationship between the provisions.

the mass violence of the twentieth century’s two world wars—followed more recently by decentralized and privatized warfare, manifested in terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and other localized forms of killing—has led to a heightened awareness of human beings’ vulnerability and the precarious nature of the institutions they create to protect themselves from violence and exploitation.

Torture is indisputably abhorrent. Why, you might ask, would you even want to think or read about torture? That is a very good question, and one this book addresses in a compelling and enlightening way. Torture is a very important issue, not least because millions of people around the world have been subjected to this odious practice—and many are enduring torture right now as you read these words.

In this landmark new text, Mark Frezzo explores the sociological perspective on human rights, which he shows to be uniquely placed to illuminate the economic, political, social, and cultural conditions under which human rights norms and laws are devised, interpreted, implemented, and enforced. Sociologists treat human rights not as immutable attributes but as highly contested claims that vary across historical time and geographic space, and investigate how human rights can serve either to empower or to constrain social actors, from large societies to small communities and identity groups.