Set against previous stages of minority protection under international law, this book discusses the role of courts and court-like bodies particularly in the Americas, Africa and Europe in articulating and accommodating the interests and needs of ethno-cultural minority groups as part of the human rights discourse. Conceptually, it exposes different moments of intervention by such bodies involving the recognition of group existence or identity, the adjustment of human rights norms to accommodate the group s perspectives, the establishment of processes designed to address the complexities resulting from competing claims, and the expansion of procedural avenues within litigation. The result is a fresh comparative practical and theoretical perspective on international jurisprudence as an emerging distinctive component in the complex history of the field.

Gaetano Pentassuglia, J.D., Ph.D., is currently Director of the International and European Law Unit and Senior Lecturer in Law at Liverpool Law School, and Visiting Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He is also a Visiting Professor at Palermo University, and was formerly Adjunct Professor at Munich University. He has served as a Visiting Scholar at several institutions and is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, published by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. He is the author of numerous leading articles and books in the field, including Minorities in International Law (2002), also translated into French and Serbian.