ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with position a theoretical re-engagement with rights away from their classic liberal traditions and the related controversies presented hitherto. Liberal legalism, for critical legal studies (CLS) scholars, represents the status quo in society and it seeks to mask the injustice of the system. Often critics of CLS claim the principle is too easy to criticise liberalism, and human rights in particular, but reluctant, within the terms of its own methodology, to propose a model of its own, as a basis for reform. The language of human rights, for Clement, means the law, which is an ‘ineffective solution to a systematic social problem’, The recognition of duties and responsibilities within human rights law is particularly developed in the African region: the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), for example. Human rights law is more far reaching than liberalism suggests, as the rights of ‘people within the ACHPR signify.
