The Claims and Duties of Socioeconomic Human Rights

Philosophical Quarterly 66 (265):701-722 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

A standard objection to socioeconomic human rights is that they are not claimable as human rights: their correlative duties are not owed to each human, independently of specific institutional arrangements, in an enforceable manner. I consider recent responses to this ‘claimability objection,’ and argue that none succeeds. There are no human rights to socioeconomic goods. But all is not lost: there are, I suggest, human rights to ‘socioeconomic consideration’. I propose a detailed structure for these rights and their correlative duties, while remaining neutral on substantive moral debates. I argue that socioeconomic-consideration human rights are satisfactorily claimable and sufficiently practical.

Similar books and articles

Subsistence Needs, Human Rights, and Imperfect Duties.Simon Hope - 2013 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 30 (1):88-100.
Natural Rights to Welfare.Siegfried Van Duffel - 2011 - European Journal of Philosophy 21 (4):641-664.
The Human Right to Subsistence.Charles Jones - 2013 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 30 (1):57-72.
Human rights and positive corporate duties: the importance of corporate–state interaction.Ivar Kolstad - 2012 - Business Ethics, the Environment and Responsibility 21 (3):276-285.
Human Rights, Universality, and Governments.Leslie Ruth Shapard - 1988 - Dissertation, The University of Tennessee
The structure of basic human rights.George E. Panichas - 1985 - Law and Philosophy 4 (3):343 - 375.

Analytics

Added to PP
2016-02-29

Downloads
813 (#18,766)

6 months
99 (#45,177)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Stephanie Collins
Monash University

Citations of this work

The Claimability Condition: Rights as Action‐Guiding Standards.Cristián Rettig - 2019 - Journal of Social Philosophy 51 (2):322-340.
A structural approach to the human right to just and favourable working conditions.Elizabeth Kahn - 2019 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 22 (7):863-883.
Towards an action-guiding theory of human rights.Cristián Rettig - 2023 - Journal of Global Ethics 19 (2):206-220.

View all 8 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Group agency: the possibility, design, and status of corporate agents.Christian List & Philip Pettit - 2011 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Philip Pettit.
The Morality of Freedom.Joseph Raz - 1986 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Two treatises of government.John Locke - 1698 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Peter Laslett.
Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980.Bernard Williams - 1981 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

View all 57 references / Add more references