I Book Review: American Exceptionalism and Human Rights
| Date | 01 September 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934410602400314 |
| Published date | 01 September 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Part D: DocumentationI Book Review |
change, without keeping in mind underlying issues of power and the fact that human
rights law is itself the product of power relations and therefore ideologically biased. It
is the merit of this book to bring this message in such a way that it is accessible for a
broad audience, including lawyers.
Michael Ignatieff (ed.), American Exceptionalism and Human Rights, Princeton
University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2005, vi and 353 p., ISBN: 0-691-11648-2*
This book is a collection of essays written by experts in international law and American
domestic law. After an introductory chapter by the editor, Michael Ignatieff, the book
is divided into three parts: I. ‘The varieties of exceptionalism’ (essays by Frederick
Schauer, Carol S. Steiker, Cass R. Sunstein and Harold Hongju Koh); II. ‘Explaining
Exceptionalism’ (essays by Andrw Moravcsik and Paul W. Kahn); and III. ‘Evaluating
Exceptionalism’ (essays by Stanley Hoffmann, Frank I. Michelman, Anne-Marie
Slaughter and John Gerard Ruggie).
The editor distinguishes the following three elements of American exceptionalism
(p. 4):
1) The United States signs on to international human rights and humanitarian law
treaties and then exempts itself from their provisions by explicit reservations,
nonratification or noncompliance.
2) It maintains double standards by judging itself and its friends by more permissive
criteria than it does to its enemies.
3) It denies jurisdiction to human rights law within its own domestic law, insisting
on the self-contained authority of its own domestic rights tradition.
How exceptional is American exceptionalism? The contributors do not all agree on the
answer to this question. One thing is clear: the United States being politically,
economically and militarily more powerful than other States, can more easily afford to
ignore international agreements. On the other hand, for the same reason the outside
world pays far more attention to what the US does and does not do than to other States
in a similar position. For instance France, as Stanley Hofmann points out, sees itself as
exceptional as the United States. Yet, the consequences of that stand are of lesser
importance. One could add for example, that from a legal point of view France does
not recognise the existence of any national minorities on French soil – a position that
has been copied by Turkey. That makes the international protection of such minorities
as the Basques and the Bretons in France, the Kurds in Turkey a difficult task indeed.
Truly exceptional is the US position on freedom of expression, as laid out in the
First Amendment to the Constitution. There would seem to be no parallel anywhere in
I Book Reviews
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 24/3 (2006) 541
* Peter Baehr, Honorary Professor of Human Rights, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
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