Beyond Human Rights
The Legal Status of the Individual in International Law
Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law Series

A paradigm change is occurring, in the course of which human beings are becoming the primary international legal persons. In numerous areas of public international law, substantive rights and obligations of individuals arguably flow directly from international law. The novel legal status of humans in international law is now captured with a concept borrowed from constitutional doctrine: international rights of the person, as opposed to international law protecting persons. Combining doctrinal analysis with current practice, this book is the most comprehensive contemporary analysis of the legal status of the individual. Beyond Human Rights, previously published in German and now revised by the author in this English edition, not only deals with the individual in international humanitarian law, international criminal law and international investment law, but it also covers fields such as consular law, environmental law, protection of individuals against acts of violence and natural disasters, refugee law and labour law.

1. Definition of the question; 2. Historical theory and practice of the international legal status of the individual; 3. The doctrine of the international legal personality of the human being; 4. International individual obligations; 5. The international responsibility of the individual; 6. Individual rights arising from international responsibility; 7. Individual rights and duties in the law of armed conflict; 8. Protection against acts of violence and forces of nature; 9. The international legal status of victims of crime; 10. Rights and duties in investment protection law; 11. Individual rights in consular law; 12. Individual rights in diplomatic protection; 13. The legal basis for the international legal personality of the individual – and the question of its independence from the State; 14. Human rights and other rights; 15. The individualized enforcement of international law; 16. Direct effect of norms establishing individual rights and duties; 17. The international individual right.

Anne Peters is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, and a Professor at the Universität Heidelberg, Freie Universität Berlin, and Universität Basel, Switzerland. She has been a member of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) in respect of Germany (2011–15) and served as the President of the European Society of International Law (2010–12). Her current research interests relate to public international law, including its history, global animal law, global governance and global constitutionalism, and the status of humans in international law.