Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice

How human rights have come to dominate world politics, from Kosovo to East Timor. Hailed by the Observer as "a book to stop another Holocaust," Crimes Against Humanity is the first work to weave together history, philosophy, international law, and politics into a comprehensive and engrossing account of the increasingly significant movement for world human rights. Robertson, one of the world's leading human rights lawyers, reveals how human rights, a concept virtually unknown before the second world war, has over the last fifty years penetrated the legal armor of the sovereign state, providing a justification for the international community—with or without the United Nations—to bring down tyrants and torturers. Called "absorbing and important" by the Guardian [London], Crimes Against Humanity defines a whole new field of inquiry.