Beyond Fragmentation: An Issues-based approach to ‘Human Rights’

Abstract

Nicholas Murray Butler said, ‘an expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing’. Yet many lawyers, and law academics in particular, spend their careers aspiring not only to become experts, but to become the expert on one or other narrowly defined niche area of law, that is to say knowing ‘more and more about less and less ...’. Nevertheless, such experts are cumulatively responsible for generating a great deal of knowledge and understanding, and they are an indispensable component of the human rights movement.