By combining anthropological insights with critical legal theory, this study explores the conceptions of knowledge, expertise and learning embedded in the educational activities of a particular network of Scandinavian and Nordic human rights experts. It examines central expert knowledge practices - the knowledge status assigned to documents in UN treaty body proceedings among others - and asks how the network's activities socialize their students to them. By exploring who in the network are assigned the status of expert and student, this study investigates what relation the patterns of knowledge flow established by the network hold to global and local societal structures. Do human rights in action realize the ideals of emancipation and equality of the abstract discourse?