Trucanini's Stare: Reconsidering Dignity in Theory and Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2025)
A central concept in international human rights law and many national constitutions is human dignity. Departing from established approaches to dignity in philosophy and legal theory, Susan Marks takes dignity in everyday life ('dignified care', 'dignity in the workplace', etc.) as a starting point for reconsidering the concept's history and significance. The result is a highly original work which gives particular attention to colonial and post-colonial engagements with dignity, and emphasises the character of human dignity as not just an idea or abstract value, but also a lived experience that cannot be understood without reference to social structures and the inequalities and hierarchies they reproduce. If dignity is an attribute which all human beings possess purely by virtue of being human, Marks shows that it is also an element within the systemic operations of privilege and power.
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A False Tree of Liberty (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Writing in 1796, Thomas Spence denounced the rights of man for setting up a ‘false tree of liberty’. This book revisits the debate in which Spence was taking part, and considers its significance for the critique of human rights today.
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International Law on the Left: Re-Examining Marxist Legacies (editor) (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
This book brings together essays which consider the contemporary relevance of Marxist thought for the study of international law, along with the history of efforts to analyse international law in Marxist terms.
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International Human Rights Lexicon (with Andrew Clapham) (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Arranged thematically in alphabetical format, this book surveys the significance and limits of international human rights law on topics that range from arms control to work. The book was written with the support of a major grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
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The Riddle of All Constitutions (Oxford University Press, 2000)
This book explores the ideas about democracy that inform international legal thought. In doing so, it considers the operation of these ideas as ideology, at the same time offering some general observations about pertinence of ideology critique in the international legal field. A Chinese translation of the book appeared in 2005.
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