Upendra Baxi: The Future of Human Rights (Third Edition)

(New Delhi: Oxford University Press India 2012)

This book critically examines the contemporary discourses on the nature of 'human rights', their histories, the myths that are embedded in them, and contributes an alternative reading of those histories by placing the concerns and interests of the 'people in struggle and communities of resistance' at centre stage. The work analyses the significance of the UN and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and goes on to study the more contemporary issues such as women's struggle to feminize the understanding and practice of human rights, the post-modernist critique of the universal idiom of human rights and, most pertinently for the current world scene, it analyzes the impact of globalization on the human rights movement. The volume includes a discussion on the proposed United Nations norms regarding the human rights responsibilities of multinational corporations and other business entities.

This edition further addresses the diversity in labouring practices that relate to making, remaking, and unmaking of internationally agreed upon human rights norms and standards.

Prof. Dr. h.c. mult. Upendra Baxi is one of the most renowned contemporary Indian legal scholars. Following his studies in Rajkot and Mumbai, he obtained his master and doctorate degree at Berkeley Law School (Boalt Hall), where he also met the author of the Austrian constitution, Hans Kelsen, who taught in Berkeley up to his passing, and the numerous conversation left a lasting impression. When he became professor at the University of Delhi in 1971, Upendra Baxi was the youngest professor in India. His further academic career led him to the universities of Durham (Duke University), Sydney, Surat, New York, Toronto and Warwick.

Prof. Dr. h.c. mult. Upendra Baxi was Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Advanced Study "Law as Culture" from April to November 2011 and from July to December 2012.