Abstract

The protection of human rights and the diffusion of non-state law or soft law are two features of the contemporary legal practice. In addition, as a matter of fact soft law is widely developing precisely in the context of human rights. This expansion can be the starting point for new insights on the nature of law. Nevertheless, the article will not concern the question of the legal status of soft law in the abstract. On the contrary, it will assume its legal character, and it will try to extract relevant elements for the comprehension of the nature of law starting from this particular trend of legal differentiation. After introducing a classification of the phenomenon and proposing some examples of the presence of soft law in the legal practice of protecting human rights, the article will aim at examining possible reasons for the link between the protection of human rights and soft law. These reasons are related to the teleological and cooperative nature of law.