Deliberative democracy and human rights /

In many respects a festschrift for the late Argentinean jurist, legal scholar, and philosopher Carlos Santiago Nino (1943-93), Deliberative Democracy and Human Rights reflects Nino's multifaceted contribution to the human rights literature. As helpfully noted in the editors' introduction, Nino believed human rights "ultimately derive from three basic moral principles on which there is a high degree of societal consensus: autonomy, inviolability, and dignity." The 19 contributors range widely, with few connections among the essays that were originally presented at a 1994 symposium at Yale Law School. The long gestation period did not result in a coherent volume, although individual chapters have great merit. Most notable are, for example, essays by Ruti Teitel on transitional justice (looking at the "punishment-pardon" dilemma), by Irwin Stotzky on creating conditions for democracy in Haiti, and by Stephen Holmes on constitutionalism, democracy, and state decay. Internal dialogue among some contributors does not lead to conclusions, which may be less important than the process of inquiry into the issues raised by Nino given their broad, almost open-ended nature. Graduate and research collections. C. E. Welch; SUNY at Buffalo