THE OMBUDSMAN AND THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN EUROPE： CASE STUDY OF ITALIAN ＂CIVIC DEFENDER＂

The paper is centered on the Ombudsman＇s role in the defense of individual human rights. The institution of the Ombudsman is based on the idea that citizens should be entitled to complain against specific acts and behaviors of their rulers and that their complaints should be investigated by an independent body. In Europe, the establishment of a specific office to investigate citizen complaints against public bureaucracy is relatively recent,     

TOWARDS THE RULE OF LAW OR THE RULE OF THE BOOTS？ A LIBERAL PERSPECTIVE ON DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Since the beginning of the ＂war＂ on terror, governments have implemented counter-terrorism laws and policies, in breach of their obligations under international human rights law, on account of the necessity to protect democracy against its enemies. Reliance on the human rights discourse in order to justify the violations committed renders it difficult to criticise these drawbacks without rethinking the concepts of rights and democracy and reformulating them. The present article attempts to answer this challenge along the lines of the reconstruction of the notions of liberal democracy as the rule of law and liberty, and human rights as spheres of individual sovereignty.     

LAW SCHOOLS AS DEPOSITARIES OF THE IDEA OF HUMAN RIGHTS -- FROM TOTALITARIANISM TO YOUNG DEMOCRACY （AS EXEMPLIFIED BY POLAND）

The role, which the higher training institutes （universities） played under the totalitarian communist regime, maintaining and developing the idea of human rights, can hardly be overestimated. In non-democratic political .systems, the human rights——understood as certain fundamental and inalienable rights each human being is vested in---have always been regarded as a threat to the existing legal and social order. It is for that very reason that the promotion of human rights under the totalitarian systems is either forbidden or greatly limited.