This chapter addresses the status of recognition of the human right to resist in conventional international law, and the outcome of recent other international codification efforts. It first considers the universal human rights system, and the theory of implied recognition as an unenumerated right in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, identifying the theorized elements and content using the analytical template. It also considers the right’s corroboration implied by provisions of the Refugee Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It then considers the right’s fragmentation in the regional human rights systems, comparing the elements and content of the express provisions in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Arab Charter on Human Rights with its apparent non-recognition in the European and Inter-American systems. Finally, the chapter considers the most recent international ‘soft law’ codification effort: a proposed provision on the right of ‘resistance and opposition to oppression’ in the draft UN Declaration on the Right to Peace, identifying its elements and content. After this second failure to codify the right to resist in a UN human rights instrument, it assesses prospects for, and the legal value of, future international codification.

The Introduction gives a snapshot of the current status of capital punishment around the globe. It gives current statistics from Amnesty International and describes Amnesty International's anti-death penalty campaign in the 1970s that led to the Declaration of Stockholm, which expressed "total and unconditional opposition to the death penalty." The Introduction describes the divide between retentionist and abolitionist countries, highlighting countries that have outlawed capital punishment in their constitutions or through judicial rulings. After detailing how the death penalty was traditionally seen as something other than torture, the Introduction discusses the law's evolving nature--and how the death penalty is increasingly seen as a torturous and cruel punishment that violates human dignity and fundamental human rights. Noting that death sentences are no longer treated as a "lawful sanction" in many locales, the Introduction describes how the U.N. General Assembly has voted on multiple occasions for a global moratorium on executions. The Introduction summarizes the current state of international law as regards capital punishment and previews the book's content.