For the last thirty years, documented human rights violations have been met with an unprecedented rise in demands for accountability. This trend challenges the use of amnesties which typically foreclose opportunities for criminal prosecutions that some argue are crucial to transitional justice. Recent developments have seen amnesties circumvented, overturned, and resisted by lawyers, states, and judiciaries committed to ending impunity for human rights violations. Yet, despite this global movement, the use of amnesties since the 1970s has not declined.
Amnesties, Accountability, and Human Rights examines why and how amnesties persist in the face of mounting pressure to prosecute the perpetrators of human rights violations.
http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15194.html
The most comprehensive account of the National human rights institutions—state agencies charged with protecting and promoting human rights domestically--(NHRI} phenomenon to date, Chains of Justice analyzes many institutions never studied before. With its global scope and fresh insights into the origins and influence of NHRIs, Chains of Justice promises to become a standard reference that will appeal to scholars immersed in the workings of these understudied institutions as well as nonspecialists curious about the role of the state in human rights.
In addition to the new hardcover and ebook releases, the Penn Press fall 2014 list includes many first-time paperbacks, among them: The First Prejudice; Crusade and Christendom;Porta Palazzo; Death by Effigy; Public Education Under Siege; In the Crossfire; and The American Mortgage System.
