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Abstract: This book explores the legal, ethical, and other policy consequences of three core structural features of international human rights law. Specifically, it analyzes the causes and consequences of its focus on individual rights instead of individual, corporate, or state duties; the framing of rights into categories of substantive rights and nondiscrimination rights; and the division of rights into positive and negative right types. In Part I, the book explains the types of duties available to supplant or supplement individual rights, and considers the advantages and disadvantages of incorporating each type of duty into the world public order, with special attention to developing more explicit state duties. In Part II, the book evaluates how substantive rights and nondiscrimination rights are used to protect similar values through different channels, explains the nondiscrimination right in international practice, and analyzes its complementarity to substantive rights. Part III of the book discusses negative and positive human right paradigms. It begins by problematizing some common definitions of positive rights and proposing a more coherent definition. It then argues for the coherence and justifiability of negative rights as a category. It further discusses the differences and surprising similarities of negative rights and positive rights, analyzes the consequences of using both rights to protect the same values, and provides a framework for understanding how to evaluate ambiguously framed rights. It concludes by discussing the conceptual, ethical and practical implications of structuring IHRL on a purely negative or positive paradigm.
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