International Human Rights Law and Municipal Law

1 The problem is deceptively simple: what happens when there are competing texts protecting the rights of individuals? In this case, the competing texts are of different origins: on the one hand, we have the domestic bill of rights, negotiated by the polity, and often embedded in the constitutional text. On the other, we have international commitments, negotiated with a view of having the core interests of all human beings at heart, by virtue of their inherent dignity, but without the direct input of individuals through a political process (rather, they are...