Bas De Gaay Fortman
Department of Law - International and European Law
Utrecht University
Netherlands
Biography
Bastiaan de Gaay Fortman (1937) is emeritus professor of Political Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague (1972-2002) and Professor of Political Economy of Human Rights at Utrecht University (since 2000). He studied economics and law at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) in Amsterdam (both doctoral degrees in 1963 cum laude). After his military service as a peloton commander at the Battalion Support Groups, he received a Master's degree in Economics at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the VU in 1965. In 1966 he graduated from Theory of Competition Policy. A konfrontation af økonomiske, politiske og juridiske principper (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company, 1966). This book received positive reviews in, among others, TheAmerican Economic Review (March 1968), The Journal of Economic Issues (March 1968) and The Economic Journal (March 1969). From 1967-1971 he was a Senior Lecturer and Acting Head of Economics at the University of Zambia in Lusaka. From 1971-1977 he was a member of the Lower House of the States General as political leader and group chairman of the Political Party Radicals (PPR) who then participated in the Den Uyl cabinet. In 1977, he became a group chairman of the PPR in the First Chamber of which he remained a member until 1991. Among his Visiting Professorships is the Mgr Willy Onclin Chair in Comparative Church Law at the KU Leuven. He has a sermon of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN). A recent book is titledPolitical Economy of Human Rights. Rights, Realities and Realization (Routledge 2012, paperback). A recent article is Between Soft Legality and Strong Legitimacy: A Political Economy Approach to the Struggle for Basic Rights to Safe Water and Sanitation, Human Rights Quarterly , November 2015 (with Michela Marcatelli).
Research Interest
Political Economy of Human Rights
Publications
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de Gaay Fortman, B. (2014). Article 1 UDHR: from Credo to Realization . In Yves Haeck, Brianne McGonigle Leyh, Clara Burbano-Herrera and Diana Contreras-Garduño, (Eds.) The Realization of Human Rights: When Theory Meets Practice - Studies in Honor of Leo Zwaak (pp 41-53.). Antwerp: Intersentia.
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de Gaay Fortman, B. (2015). The crowbar to universalality: implications of 'equal in rights' . In Marjolein van den Brink, Susanne Burri & Jenny Goldschmidt (Ed.), Equality and Human Rights: nothing but trouble? Liber Amicorum Titia Loenen (pp. 21-43) (23 p.). Utrecht: Utrecht University.
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de Gaay Fortman, B. & Marcatelli, M. (2015). Between Soft Legality and Strong Legitimacy - A Political Economy Approach to the Struggle for Basic Entitlements to Safe Water and Sanitation. Human Rights Quarterly, 37 (4), (pp. 941–976).
