ABSTRACT
This chapter looks outside the particular charity law experience of common law nations to identify principles and standards of a more general nature, established on an international basis in recent years, which have acquired the standing of legal ‘grundnorms’ or benchmarks for law and practice and, arguably, should have a direct bearing on charity law as it relates to social inclusion within those nations. International conventions and related case law are now rapidly promoting a harmonization of principles, policy and practice across many countries. A new jurisprudential floor is being gradually put in place to uniformly strengthen national laws including the law relating to charity in common law nations. The identification of key benchmarks in international law permits an analysis of their application in the context of national charity law and a comparative assessment of national differences in law and practice, insofar as they influence issues of social inclusion. In that way it makes an important contribution to constructing a research template for use in examining and comparing the jurisdictions selected for study in Part IV.
