Dr. Sonja Grover Publishes Three New Books

By Jan Oakley

Congratulations to Dr. Sonja Grover, professor in the Faculty of Education, on the recent publication of three books:

• Judicial Oppression of Child Rights in Democratic States and by International Human Rights Bodies (2025, Springer) examines the contemporary systematic judicial suppression of child human rights empowerment in Western States. It is argued that a new evolved understanding of child rights calls for a rethinking of the court’s patris patriae doctrine to now include the protection and strengthening of child autonomous fundamental human rights and child empowerment.
• Litigating the Politics of Human Rights: Contemporary US Culture Wars on Trial (2025, Springer) examines selected U.S. landmark cases of the Trump era to explore to what degree the U.S. courts have reinforced constitutionally protected human rights or cast the issues as a matter of governmental discretionary decision-making on social policy matters. The book highlights the risk to a democracy of the latter legal characterization.
• The Responsibility to Protect, Second Edition (2025): Perspectives on the Concept's Meaning, Proper Application and Value (Routledge) examines the international community’s responsibility to protect civilians from atrocity international crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity and systematic war crimes). First published in 2017, this second edition includes a new introduction and an afterward addressing contemporary armed conflicts and R2P.  This book presents the views of various international human rights scholars (including the editor) on the possibility, legality and strategies for intervention where a State is unable and/or unwilling to protect civilians against atrocity international crimes.