Sexual Orientation and Human Rights: The United States Constitution, the European Convention, and the Canadian Charter

By Robert Wintemute

Book Overview

"Lesbian and gay rights are human rights " Is this just a political slogan to be chanted outside legislatures, or are there legal arguments to support the claim that the right to be free from sexual orientation discrimination is a human right? In particular, can national constitutions or international human rights treaties be interpreted as prohibiting discrimination against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals? Robert Wintemute attempts to answer these questions by examining three of the most commonly used arguments in favor of such an interpretation: sexual orientation is an "immutable status", sexual orientation is a "fundamental choice" (or part of "privacy"), and sexual orientation discrimination is sex discrimination. To assess their merits, he looks at the relative success and failure in cases argued under three of the world's most influential human rights instruments: the United States Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He also considers the potential impact of the United Nations Human Rights Committee's recent interpretation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in Toonen v. Australia.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198264887
• ISBN13: 9780198264880
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Length: 334 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Sexual Orientation and Human Rights

This book is great. It provides a comparative analysis of ways in which the European Convention on Human Rights, the Canadian Charter of Rights and the US Bill of Rights protect (or fail to protect) lesbian and gay rights. It is comprehensive in its approach - the only criticism being that it is now out of date. This is a prblem particularly for the sections of Europe and Canada, as a great deal of improvement in legal protection of lesbians and gay men has occurred in those jurisdictions. But despite this, it is still a very useful book for understanding the development of rights protections in these three jurisdictions. Suitable primarily for lawyers, law students and political scientists - not really for the lay reader.