This volume analyses the legal grounds premises and extent of pecuniary compensation for
violations of human rights in national legal systems. The scope of comparison includes
liability regimes in general and in detail the correlation between pecuniary remedies
available under international law and under domestic law and special (alternative)
compensation systems. All sources of human rights violations are embraced including historical
injustices and systematical and gross violations.The book is a collection of nineteen
contributions written by public international law international human rights and private law
experts covering fifteen European jurisdictions (including Central and Eastern Europe) the
United States Israel and EU law. The contributions initially prepared for the 19th
International Congress of Comparative law in Vienna (2014) present the latest developments in
legislation scholarship and case-law concerning domestic causes of action in cases of human
rights abuses. The book concludes with a comparative report which assesses the developments in
tort law and public liability law the role of the constitutionalisation of the right to
damages as well as the court practice related to the process of enforcement of human rights
through monetary remedies. This country-by-country comparison allows to consider whether the
value of protection of human rights as expressed in international treaties ius cogens and in
national constitutional laws justifies the conclusion that the interests at stake should enjoy
protection under the existing civil liability rules or that a new cause of action or even a
whole new set of rules should be created in national systems.
