Home/Vakken/Do You Believe in Human Rights? A Law and Humanities Approach to Human Rights across Cultures
TL2V230067.5 ECTSQ1EnglishBachelor

Do You Believe in Human Rights? A Law and Humanities Approach to Human Rights across Cultures

FaculteitFaculty of Humanities
NiveauBachelor
Studiejaar2026-2027

Beschrijving

Course goals

If you finish this assignment/course successfully, you are able to: 

  1. Assess international legal, scholarly and public conversations on Human Rights from an interdisciplinary perspective 
  2. Employ theoretical insights on Human Rights from the fields of Law and the Humanities to analyze cases from European and Asian contexts 
  3. Reflect on the position of your own discipline within the interdisciplinary field of Human Rights. 

Content

Respect for human rights is seen by many as necessary for people to live a life of dignity. Since the late twentieth century, human rights seem to be everywhere, from European law to NGOs to diplomacy. At the same time, however, human rights are highly contested and have many critics.
Some say they are political tools, some that they are too Western, others find them idealistic or misdirected in their current form. This course will help you understand what human rights are, and why they are strongly debated.

We will discuss human rights in an interdisciplinary manner as legal, political and cultural phenomena in both Europe and Asia.
This is an interdisciplinary course, combining approaches from law and the humanities. Law and humanities students will on the one hand recognize their own disciplinary background in the course and on the other hand start seeing human rights from the other discipline’s perspective.
At the end of the course, you will have a clearer understanding of why human rights are debated across cultures, and even ‘from within’ among European judges from the European Court of Human Rights.
 

Additional information

This course has priority rules and a waiting list. Your enrolment is guaranteed if you are:

  • enrolled in the minor Taal, recht en cultuur.
  • an exchange student and meet the course’s entry requirements.

In all other situations, you will be placed on a waiting list if you enrol in this course. For any remaining slots in the course, lots are drawn among the students on the waiting list.  


This course has been designed by professors from the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Humanities and is part of the minor “Language, Law and Culture”.
Students can follow the complete minor (4 courses) but are also welcome to do this course on its own.

This minor has as its central theme the cross-fertilization between law, culture and language from both a humanities and legal perspective and is interesting for law students who want to know more about the humanities, and for humanities students with an interest in law.
In addition to the Do You Believe in Human Rights?, the minor consists of three other courses (taught in Dutch):

  • Taal, recht, regels en interpretatie (RGBUSBR028)
  • Vrijheid van meningsuiting in taal, recht en cultuur (TL3V22003)
  • Narratieven en recht (RGBUIER018)

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