| Human Rights Law

HRL is a mandatory, standalone course taught in the 3rd year as part of the BA LLB Hons programme. HRL is not a compulsorily prescribed course as per the Bar Council Rules and NLSIU is one of the few law schools in India where human rights law is taught as a core course at the undergraduate level.

While the period after the Second World War saw a rise in the recognition of human rights for all people through international instruments and the adoption of human rights principles in various country constitutions, the efficacy of human rights law has become an essential question. In this course, we aim to go beyond the general discussions around the international legal regime of human rights law to scrutinize a few core questions:

What do we understand by the term human rights and what do we mean by human rights law?

How has human rights law and the discourse of human rights evolved (both at the international level and in India)?

What is the normative basis for human rights law and how has this evolved?

How is human rights law enforced? What are the limitations of mechanisms that are meant to enforce human rights law at the international, regional and domestic level?

How does human rights law at the state and national level interact with that at the regional and international level and how are international human rights norms internalised through courts and other domestic mechanisms?