Defining Rights and Wrongs investigates the day-to-day practices of low-level officials and intermediaries as they manage the gap between social relations and legal meaning in order to construct domestic human rights complaints. It documents how agency staff struggle to manage a huge body of claims within a system of restrictive rules but expansive definitions of discrimination. It also examines how independent human rights lawyers and advocacy organizations challenge human rights commissions and seek to radically reform the existing commission/tribunal structure.
This book identifies the values that a human rights system should uphold if it is to be both fair and consistent with its own goals of promoting mutual respect and fostering the personal dignity and equal rights of citizens.
