Decoding International Law: Semiotics and the Humanities

Abstract

This paper constitutes the Introduction to Professor Tiefenbrun's book, "Decoding International Law: Semiotics and the Humanities" (Oxford University Press, 2010), copyright by Oxford University Press, Inc. (this excerpt posted here by permission).

Violations of international law and human rights are the plague of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Man's inhumanity to man seems to be epidemic, especially as wars proliferate and warriors abandon respect for human rights and the laws of war.

Witnessing mass violence and violations of human rights has a powerful and dramatic effect. Writers, filmmakers, artists, philosophers, historians, and legal scholars deeply affected by the horrors of human rights violations occurring all over the world respond by representing them individually through the humanities. The hidden meanings and the international law issues embedded in these artistic representations of international human rights violations are the subject of this book.

Keywords: Semiotics, Humanities, International Law, International Human Rights, Law and Art, Decoding, Law and Humanities

JEL Classification: K10, K33