This essay roughly sketches two major conceptions of autonomy in contemporary bioethics that promote the resourcification of human body parts: (1) a narrow conception of autonomy as self-determination; and (2) the conception of autonomy as dissociated from human dignity. In this paper I will argue that, on the one hand, these two conceptions are very different from that found in the modern European tradition of philosophical inquiry, because bioethics has concentrated on an external account of patient’s self-determination (...) and on dissociating dignity from internal human nature. However, on the other hand, they are consistent with more recent European philosophy. In this more recent tradition, human dignity has gradually been dissociated from contextual values, and human subjectivity has been dissociated from objectivity and absolutized as never to be objectified. In the concluding part, I will give a speculative sketch in which Kant’s internal inquiry of maxim of ends, causality and end, and dignity as irreplaceability is recombined with bioethics’ externalized one and used to support an extended human resourcification. (shrink)

The trade in human body parts can be understood as a solution to key challenges for both buyers and suppliers, as well as being a manifestation of individual property rights over one’s own body. However, it can be argued that there are serious ethical issues involved in commercializing the body in this way, despite which there has recently been a large increase in the international trade in human body parts. The most extensive transactions (...) have concerned the trade in kidneys and the services of the fertility industry. An important driver of this is the fact that the medical profession is increasingly able to facilitate exchanges of human body parts relatively smoothly. The chapter focuses on commercial surrogacy as an example of the ethical aspects of the trade in human body parts and addresses the potential interplay between markets and ethical issues. (shrink)

In the Sorbonne lectures on the philosophical and psychological inquiry of child development, Merleau-Ponty offers a fundamental insight about imitation. Denying the representation-based explanation of imitation, he proposes that gestures occur without representation through the body-object relation, such as “precommunication” based on the works of body schema. Merleau-Ponty’s thought could be examined by way of more practical examples of body techniques. This paper describes the experience of object manipulation, in particular, Bunraku puppetry. Because three puppeteers manipulate a (...) single puppet together in Bunraku, this example might be a challenge to an ordinary assumption that a body is owned by an individual and that inner thoughts control the body. Merleau-Ponty’s insight suggests that the puppeteers share another type of body schema that is not internalized to their individual bodies but emerges afresh in each performance through collaborative movement. (shrink)

Scholarship on Plato's Timaeus has paid relatively little attention to Tim. 77a–81, a seemingly disjointed passage on topics including plants, respiration, blood circulation, and musical sounds. Despite this comparative neglect, commentators both ancient and modern have levelled a number of serious charges against Timaeus' remarks in the passage, questioning the coherence and explanatory power of what they take to be a theory of respiration. In this paper, I argue that the project of 77a–81e is not to sketch theories of respiration, (...) circulation, and digestion, but to explain how the human body is maintained in light of and despite constant environmental depletion. Further, I argue that in order to understand this account of “the replenishing system,” we need to understand Timaeus' striking analogy of the fish trap or nassa. Commentators have generally focused directly on the workings of the bodily construction that Timaeus likens to a fish trap, but without considering how we should understand the analogy qua analogy. I develop a functional reading of the analogy that yields a coherent account of the replenishing system on which previous criticisms of Timaeus' remarks on respiration do not arise. Aside from lending greater unity to the passage, both internally and within its immediate context in the dialogue, this account of the replenishing system contributes to our understanding of Timaeus' reason-and-necessity explanatory framework as applied to the human body and has noteworthy implications for specific explanatory principles, in particular like-to-like motion and circular thrust. (shrink)

This article is a response to the public consultation on the draft Code of Practice issued by the Human Tissue Authority on the import and export of human bodies, body parts and tissue. The question is whether the Draft Code and the Human Tissue Act go far enough to prevent the unethical acquisition and movement of human tissue. I conclude that the answer to this question is ‘no’ and go on to demonstrate how the identified (...) deficiencies can be remedied. (shrink)

This paper responds to an invitation by the editors to consider whether the intellectual property regime suggests an appropriate model for protecting interests in detached human body parts. It begins by outlining the extent of existing IP protection for body parts in Europe, and the relevant strengths and weaknesses of the patent system in that regard. It then considers two further species of IP right of less obvious relevance. The first are the statutory rights of ownership conferred (...) by domestic UK law in respect of employee inventions, and the second are the economic and moral rights recognised by European and international law in respect of authorial works. In the argument made, both of these species of IP right may suggest more appropriate models of sui generis protection for detached human body parts than patent rights because of their capacity better to accommodate the relevant public and private interests in respect of the same. (shrink)

This article interrogates whether and how the concept of ‘patriarchy’ is used by UN human rights treaty monitoring bodies (treaty bodies) and special procedures to interpret state obligations to respect and ensure women’s human rights. There are two key points that arise out of this study: first, that several treaty bodies and special procedures purposely and consistently use the concept of ‘patriarchy’ when discussing women’s human rights, and second, that although not all treaty bodies and special procedures (...) have referred to the terms ‘patriarchy’ or ‘patriarchal’, an examination of those that have reveals a marked difference in how the terms are used by treaty bodies when compared with special procedures. While treaty bodies render the meaning of ‘patriarchy’ as being synonymous with certain harmful practices, such as female-genital mutilation (FGM), special procedures utilise ‘patriarchy’ as a system of power, permeating every facet of society. In this article I will argue that the current state of dissonance between the understandings of ‘patriarchy’ by treaty bodies and special procedures creates an unnecessary ambiguity that does nothing to advance gender equality. Furthermore, utilising a nuanced understanding of patriarchy, as articulated by intersectional and anti-essentialist feminist scholars, would potentially equip treaty bodies and special procedures for more meaningful interpretation of rights themselves, and greater protection of women’s human rights. (shrink)

Trafficking in human body parts is one of the most severe form of crime in modern times. The topicality of this phenomenon reinforces the fact that it is intertwined with organised crime and human despair. The resulting repercussions are dangerous for the “donor”, prosperous for the “intermediaries”, and vital for the “recipient”. The paper analyses the phenomenon of trafficking in human body parts, which is directly related to the development of transplant medicine and surgery. (...) class='Hi'>Human organ transplantation is moving toward indicative ethics, as ethics of responsibility, and is gradually moving beyond imperative ethics, emphasising duty. Human organ donation is an act of self-sacrifice. Therefore, from an ethical and moral perspective, the commercialization or trafficking of human organs is unacceptable because it violates human dignity. In addition to the ethical implications, the paper analyses international documents on this topic and the Croatian normative regulations on this issue. Finally, bioethical and criminal law answers to this question are given. (shrink)

In 'Stakes and Kidneys' the author discusses various ethical issues surrounding the international trade in human organs.

Since the very dawn of its history, modern philosophical anthropology has been addressing the issue of the human body. As a result of those efforts, Descartes, de Biran, Husserl, Sartre, Marcel, Merleau-Ponty and others have brought forward a variety of conceptions concerning various aspects of human corporeality. Anthropological explorations concerning the question of the human body, appear in a particularly interesting way, when they are considered in the context of those points of view which, in (...) an essential way, refer to the subjective character of the human being. It is a matter of reconstructing and analyzing how the subject's corporeality is given to the subject, originarily, according to the phenomenological rule zu den Sachen selbst. The aim of this paper is thus to put into some order the concerns of a variety of anthropologists with regard to the question of the human body, as it is given to, or experienced by, the subject. A metatheoretical analysis of this field proves it is possible to do so with the use of a tool, which is called here, a dimension of corporeality. (shrink)

Since the very dawn of its history, modern philosophical anthropology has been addressing the issue of the human body. As a result of those efforts, Descartes, de Biran, Husserl, Sartre, Marcel, Merleau-Ponty and others have brought forward a variety of conceptions concerning various aspects of human corporeality. Anthropological explorations concerning the question of the human body, appear in a particularly interesting way, when they are considered in the context of those points of view which, in (...) an essential way, refer to the subjective character of the human being. It is a matter of reconstructing and analyzing how the subject's corporeality is given to the subject, originarily, according to the phenomenological rule zu den Sachen selbst. The aim of this paper is thus to put into some order the concerns of a variety of anthropologists with regard to the question of the human body, as it is given to, or experienced by, the subject. A metatheoretical analysis of this field proves it is possible to do so with the use of a tool, which is called here, a dimension of corporeality. (shrink)

This essay challenges the coherence of arguments brought in support of prohibiting the sale of human body parts. Considerations of neither social utility nor individual rights nor avoidance of exploitation seem sufficient to ground such a prohibition. Indeed, they may be sufficient to invalidate it.

Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road confronts readers with a question: what is there to live towards after apocalypse? McCarthy locates his protagonists in the aftermath of the world’s fiery destruction, dramatizing a relationship between a father and a son, who are, as McCarthy puts it, “carrying the fire.” This essay asserts that the body carrying the fire is a sacred, incandescent body that connects to and with the world and the other, unifying the human and the divine. (...) This essay will consider the body as a sacred connection in The Road. Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics and Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic approach will help to explore what is sacred. In addition, their works elucidate the body as a present site of human connection and sacredness while calling attention to what is glaringly absent yet hauntingly present in McCarthy’s text: the mother. In the aftermath of destruction, primitive, sacred connections become available through the sensual body, highlighting what is at stake in the novel: the connection of body and spirit. The essay will attempt to show that McCarthy’s rejection of a redemptive framework, or hope in an otherworldly reality, shrouds spirit in physicality symbolized by the fire carried by the body. This spirit offers another kind of hope, one based on the body’s potential to feel and connect to the other. The thought and works of Ricoeur and Kristeva will broaden a reading of McCarthy’s novel, especially as a statement about the unification of body and spirit, contributing a multidimensional view of a contemporary problem regarding what sustains life after a cataclysmic event. (shrink)

This article addresses the moral and legal difficulties sport governing bodies encounter as human rights promoters. The case presented here is the 2023 decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to allow athletes from Russia and Belarus to compete in international sport under neutral colours, after recommending complete exclusion a year before due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While IOC’s change of mind was influenced by UN experts on human rights, claiming that the ban discriminated (...) against Russian athletes, the same experts fail to take into account competing human rights elements that could favour the ban. To that end, this article discusses the complexities of prioritizing human rights in an Olympic context and, deriving from that, demonstrates the existence of moral and legal support for upholding the exclusion of Russia. Finally, the analysis of how to prioritize morally and legally between competing human rights offers deliberative material to other sport governing bodies which could be used to carve out preventive measures prior to their next encounter with a similar situation. (shrink)

Review of Nils Hoppe book, Bioequity--Property in the Body.

Ancient philosophy has been a source of inspiration for contemporary philosophy in recent decades. An outstanding example is the renaissance of hylomorphism in the field of philosophy of biology. For the philosophy of mind, hylomorphism has been little discussed so far. Therefore, ancient models in the philosophy of mind are still of interest. This article argues that Plato’s Phaedo can act as a source for contemporary debates. As a starting point, Simmias’s objections to the immortality of the soul are analyzed. (...) Plato does not simply reject these objections, but introduces conditions for a hylomorphistic understanding of the soul in Socrates’ reply. These conditions are the following: (A) the mind supervenes on the body; (B) this supervenience must allow the strong emergence of the mind; (C) the mind comprises causal powers; (D) teleological explanations are a necessary ingredient of a suitable model for the mind-body problem. With these conditions, Plato already introduces central components that are present in contemporary philosophical debates, but have not yet been unified into a hylomorphistic concept in the philosophy of mind. The present article proposes this unification. (shrink)

The trend toward the “humanization” of international law reflects a greater emphasis on individuals rather than simply states as objects of concern. The advance of human rights law (HRL) has been an important impetus for this trend. Some observers suggest that humanization can be furthered even more by applying HRL rather than international humanitarian law (IHL) to hostilities between states and nonstate armed groups, unless a state explicitly declares that it is engaged in an armed conflict. This (...) essay argues, however, that a court should not defer to a state's characterization of hostilities, but should base its analysis on whether hostilities meet the criteria for an armed conflict. Applying HRL to hostilities that effectively are an armed conflict but not acknowledged as such risks diluting the legitimacy and normative force of HRL. On the one hand, if a court applies conventional stringent HRL standards, this body of law may be seen as unrealistic and is likely to be ignored. On the other hand, a court that adapts HRL standards to armed conflict may need to take a consequentialist approach at odds with HRL's deontological foundations. Clearly differentiating between HRL and IHL may thus best promote the humanization of warfare. (shrink)

Children with innate variations of sex characteristics (also termed differences of sex development or intersex traits) are routinely subjected to medical interventions that aim to make their bodies appear or function more typically female or male. Many such interventions lack clear evidence of benefit, they have been challenged for thirty years, and they are now understood to violate children’s rights to bodily autonomy and bodily integrity. In this paper I argue that these persist in part due to epistemic injustices and (...) biomedical authority. Epistemic injustices include limited disclosure of current practices, the systemic marginalisation of community voices and psychosocial professionals, and attempts to discredit or misrepresent testimony. Bioethics has largely failed to change medical practice, and sometimes plays a role in perpetuating epistemic injustices. I find that the development of an intersex movement provides opportunities for epistemic justice and liberation by engaging with other disciplines and promoting oversight of medical decision-making. The paper draws particularly on Australian sources, including internationally influential ethical principles. (shrink)

After describing the three European strategies focused on social control, this essay will first demonstrate that the first two strategies try less to protect societies than to enforce efficient tools of governance. Additionally, they reinforce stereotypes harming Muslim immigrants. I show that diverse approaches in policing can make a difference in the communities where police forces operate. The third strategy, that of prevention requiring the cooperation of the citizens, may be more sustainable in the long term as it facilitates communication (...) among local politicians and involved actors. Finally, I point out that the interplay of interests, ideas and institutions matter a great deal to the comparison. (shrink)

Consistent with Article 38 of the Statute of International Court of Justice, the primary sources of international human rights law can be identified as treaty, custom, and general principles of law derived from national legal systems. Treaty provisions in human rights law are often textually fairly open‐ended and hence will need to be read in the light of institutionalized practices of interpretation, such as the jurisprudence by regional human rights courts and international human (...) rights treaty bodies. Despite the universal acceptance of human rights treaties and the recognition of human rights as norms of customary international law, human rights violations do occur in all parts of the world and are often systematic. Major shortcomings of the international monitoring mechanisms for human rights treaties are their underresourcing, lack of visibility, and ineffectiveness. Even if human rights treaties have become universally accepted, compliance control remains underdeveloped. (shrink)

The International Panel on Social Progress is an independent association of top research scholars with the goal of assessing methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. The IPSP has produced a report consisting of twenty-two chapters in three volumes that distills the research of these scholars and outlines what the best social science has to say about positive social change. Written in accessible language by scholars across the social sciences and humanities, these volumes assess the achievements of (...) world societies in past centuries, the current trends, the dangers that we are now facing, and the possible futures in the twenty-first century. It covers the main socio-economic, political, and cultural dimensions of social progress, global as well as regional issues, and the diversity of challenges and their interplay around the world. The authors offer a cautious optimistic conclusion: multiple ideas for social progress and better policies are already available and deserve to be tested and implemented. (shrink)

Globalization leads to cross-border business transactions between societies with very different norms and regulations regarding bribery. Bribery in international business transactions can be seen as a function of not only the demand for such bribes in different countries, but the supply, or willingness to provide bribes by multinational firms and their representatives. This study addresses the propensity of firms from 30 different countries to engage in international bribery. The study incorporates both domestic (economic development, culture, and domestic corruption (...) in the supplying country) and international factors (those countries’ patterns of trade and involvement in international accords) in explaining the willingness to bribe abroad. The propensity to provide bribes was the lowest when corruption was not tolerated in the multinational firms’ home countries, when the firms’ countries were signatories of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) anti-bribery convention, and when those countries traded heavily with wealthier nations. Further, these findings are maintained when controlling for levels of economic development and cultural values in the supplying country. In terms of culture, firms from high power distance countries showed a somewhat greater propensity for providing bribes in transactions with less-developed nations. (shrink)

Current developments in biomedicine are presenting us with difficult ethical decisions and raising complex policy questions about how to regulate these new developments. Particularly vexing for governments have been issues related to human embryo experimentation. Because some of the most promising biomedical developments, such as stem cell research and nuclear somatic transfer, involve such experimentation, several international bodies have drafted documents aimed to provide guidance to governments when developing biomedical science policy. Here I focus on two such documents: (...) the Council of Europe's Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being and the Additional Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being.I argue that by using human dignity as a criterion to determine the permissibility of particular human embryo research practices, these documents cannot aid in identifying research that would be contrary to human dignity. Thus, they fail to guide public policy on embryo experimentation. Their use of human dignity as a criterion makes their task of offering guidance unfeasible because the concept as used in these documents is too vague and is applied in contradictory ways. I discuss the main goals of these documents and their claims in relation to human embryo research. I then discuss how they have influenced public policy in several countries. Finally, I show that although these Council of Europe treaties attempt to serve as public policy guides in the area of embryo research, they fail to do so. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Jonathan Glover, a prominent advocate of human genetic engineering, relies on a limited naturalistic account of normal human function in his defense of genetic engineering as a means of decreasing future instances of disability. I show that his concept of disability and the normative argument informed by it in his Choosing Children: Genes, Disability, and Design fails to incorporate the phenomenological dimension of embodiment, and that this dimension should be included in any (...) account of disability and human flourishing. Such inclusion, however, requires us to consider seriously the counterintuitive view that racial minorities are constitutionally disabled in racist societies. (shrink)

Arthur Danto was quite engaged in the world, through campus activism at Columbia and as an early member of Amnesty International USA. Danto's line seems to betray a deeply felt humanism that guided his practical politics. Danto's work with Amnesty was motivated in part by a brief glimpse into France's violence during the war in Algeria. He writes about being in Paris during the 1961 October Massacre and seeing the bodies of Algerian protesters, killed by police, floating in the (...) Seine. The ethic of responsiveness, as well as the desire to be able to narrate the present as past, was something Danto carried over to his philosophy as well. Danto claims that the means of fighting are therefore limited to those that would not prevent the war itself from ending and peace from beginning again. (shrink)

Descriptions of body imagery and body parts are evident in expressions of Old Testament texts. Although there is no single term for ‘body’ in the Hebrew mind, the concept of ‘body’ functions in its different parts. As part of anthropomorphic descriptions of God and expressions attached to humankind, body parts have special significance, contributing to the theological dimension of texts. The poems in the Psalter are no exception. Several body parts are mentioned in Psalm (...) 38, an individual lament song. In addition to God’s hand (v. 3) and an allusion to his voice (v. 16), several body parts describe the psalmist’s condition. These include ‘flesh’ (bāšār, 3, 8), bones (‘ætsæm, 3), head (rôsh, 5), loins (kæsæl, 8), heart (lēb, 9, 11), eyes (‘yn, 11), mouth (pæh, 14, 15), and feet (rægæl, 17). In addition, allusions to the ear (14, 15) and injured body (wounds, 6) form part of the psalmist’s lamenting experience.Contribution: This presentation touches on the general meaning of these body imagery in the Old Testament and their specific function and meaning in the text of Psalm 38. A textual analysis will portray their theological significance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 58-83 [Access article in PDF] Imagi-Nation: The Imagined Community and the Aesthetics of Mourning Marc Redfield Of the many relics of the Romantic era that continue to shape our (post)modernity, the nation-state surely ranks among the most significant. Two decades ago Benedict Anderson commented that "'the end of the era of nationalism,' so long prophesied, is not remotely in sight" [IC 3], and the intervening years (...) have made it increasingly clear that the developments and processes we summarize as "globalization" operate in mingled synchrony and tension with the political form of the nation-state. 1 That the nation-state should remain the premier vehicle of political and economic legitimation in an era dominated by American imperialism and international capital--forces that, of course, regularly and flagrantly violate the sovereignty of disadvantaged nations--is unsurprising if one accepts the continuing pertinency and power of a Western master-narrative of modernity, according to which the nation represents the emergence of a people into history and prefigures the global achievement of universal human concord. As the proper subject of history, the nation-state can prefigure history's end because, as David Lloyd writes, "the particularism of [nationalism's] contents, potentially in contradiction with the universalism of modernity, is subsumed in the formal congruence between its own narratives of identity, directed at one people, and the narrative of identity that universal history represents for humanity in general" ["Nationalisms" 178]. Lloyd goes on to note that the nation's intermediate status in this narrative--halfway between primitive tribalism and modernity's ever-deferred perpetual peace--accounts for nationalism's irreducibly double association with modernization and atavism. In consequence, the modernist paradigm continues to rule many skeptical or hostile accounts of nationalism, for so long as the nation-state is taken to supersede other political or social formations, the cosmopolitan critique fails to challenge "the fundamental philosophy of universal history that underwrites nationalism's inscription in modernity" ["Nationalisms" 177]. Indeed, both in the corporate media and in mainstream Western political discourse generally, nations and nationalisms are commonly treated as atavistic or progressive depending on the degree to which their behavior harmonizes with globalizing imperatives. That these imperatives emanate quite blatantly from Wall Street in no way seriously troubles the effectiveness of modernity as a narrative paradigm. 2Seeking to discredit universalizing narrative, much cultural criticism in recent years has exchanged cosmopolitanism and the abstract question of "nationalism" for an emphasis [End Page 58] on the contextual construction of national movements or identities. 3 This valuable body of work has sought to recover the particularity of cultural and socioeconomic circumstance, stressed the fundamental role of racism in colonialist contexts, and noted ways in which nationalist movements draw on or unleash forms of resistance that challenge representationalist politics. The pages that follow, however, remain focused on the nationalist fantasy proper to the discourse of modernity. Cultural critique can only profit from knowing as much as possible about the favored turns of the universal-historicist model, particularly since, as Lloyd and others have emphasized, this model is an aesthetic one that grants a world-historical role to "culture." The state, in a tradition that in its main lines runs from Schiller through Hegel and Matthew Arnold and is still very much alive today, represents the community to itself, thereby giving the community form and in a certain sense giving it an ethical imperative and a future: the state represents "our best self" [Arnold 99, passim], "the archetype of a human being" [Schiller 17], because it signifies the formal unification both of the citizen with the community and of the community with universal humanity. Because this unification is ideal rather than actual, it can be projected as the ethical terminus of history (that is, as the ideal of an accomplished modernity). The state's core mission thus becomes pedagogical: its job is to acculturate its subjects into citizens. The production of a docile citizenry thereby obtains an ethical aura and an aesthetic character, insofar as the artwork and the domain of aesthetic or "cultural" experience generally become... (shrink)

This is the first of three volumes containing a report from the International Panel on Social Progress. The IPSP is an independent association of top research scholars with the goal of assessing methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. Written in accessible language by scholars across the social sciences and humanities, these volumes assess the achievements of world societies in past centuries, the current trends, the dangers that we are now facing, and the possible futures in the (...) twenty-first century. It covers the main socio-economic, political, and cultural dimensions of social progress, global as well as regional issues, and the diversity of challenges and their interplay around the world. This particular volume covers topics such as economic inequality and growth, finance and corporations, labor, capitalism, and social justice. (shrink)

The human body is both religious subject and scientific object, the manifest locus of both religious gnosis and secular cognition. Embodiment provides the basis for a rich cross–fertilization between cognitive science and comparative religion, but cognitive studies must return to their empiricist scientific roots by reembodying subjectivity, thus spanning the natural bridge between the two fields. Referencing the ritual centrality and cognitive content of the body, I suggest a materialist but nonreductionist construct of the self as a (...) substantial cognitive embodiment that embraces not just perception and cognition, mind and spirit, but the forceful physicality of the moving body. Proprioception of the body's moving mass constitutes a mode of knowing that resonates strongly with the experience of self, not only across religious traditions but also within the physical sciences. By way of illustration, two directions are suggested in which a construct of the self as a substantial cognitive embodiment might lead us: first, a body–based interpretation of the Islamic myth of Adam and Iblis that reveals an internal substantiality as constitutive of the divinely imaged Self, and second, a new, religious direction for human evolutionary theory based on the implications of an embodied intentionality. (shrink)

This is the third of three volumes containing a report from the International Panel on Social Progress. The IPSP is an independent association of top research scholars with the goal of assessing methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. Written in accessible language by scholars across the social sciences and humanities, these volumes assess the achievements of world societies in past centuries, the current trends, the dangers that we are now facing, and the possible futures in the (...) twenty-first century. It covers the main socio-economic, political, and cultural dimensions of social progress, global as well as regional issues, and the diversity of challenges and their interplay around the world. This particular volume covers topics such as world cultures and religions, families, global health, education, and the contributions of social sciences to institutional change. (shrink)

In March 1944, doctors at the University of Chicago began infecting prisoners at Stateville penitentiary with a virulent strand of malaria to test the effectiveness and side-effects of potent anti-malarial drugs. According to Dr. Alf Sven Alving, the principal investigator, malaria "was the number-one medical problem of the war in the Pacific, for we were losing far more men to malaria than to enemy bullets." This refrain would rehearse one of the most productive ways of speaking about live prisoner experimentation. (...) The Stateville inmates became human once again and regained their citizenship and political voice by giving their bodies to the war effort. In this essay, I explore how the consent of the prisoners was constructed and how it compares to the way in which we fabricate the willingness of soldiers to sacrifice their lives for their country. I begin to explore the question: How is it, exactly, that we ask someone to die for us? (shrink)

Since the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, over 165 countries have incorporated human rights standards into their legal systems: the resulting jurisprudence from diverse cultural traditions creates new dimensions to concepts first articulated in 1948. In this revised second edition, Nihal Jayawickrama draws on extensive sources to encapsulate the judicial interpretation of human rights law in one comprehensive volume. Jayawickrama covers the case law of the superior courts of 103 countries in America, Europe, Africa, (...) Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific, as well as jurisprudence of human rights monitoring bodies. He analyses the judicial application of human rights law to demonstrate empirically the universality of contemporary human rights norms. This definitive volume is essential for legal practitioners, and government and non-governmental officials, as well as academics and students of both constitutional law and the international law of human rights. (shrink)

The relationship between legal pluralism and international human rights law is a complex and multi-faceted one. To fully appreciate the nature of this relationship, one has to desegregate the various forms of legal pluralism and analyse whether in their existence or operation they are compatible with international human rights law. This article undertakes such an exercise drawing on the jurisprudence of global and regional human rights bodies. In doing so, it goes beyond a mechanical audit (...) of legal pluralism in the light of specific human rights and explores more foundational issues such as the nature and extent of a State’s human rights obligations when legal pluralism exists within its borders, the possibility of waiving human rights and questions of cultural relativism which hover over any discussion of legal pluralism. What emerges from this analysis is that a tentative conceptual framework exists to regulate the relationship between legal pluralism and international human rights law. It is one that not only requires the State to render legal pluralism compatible with human rights but also stipulates the process by which this should be done. Effectively implemented, it can achieve this objective and harness the pull of religious and customary law to ensure the more effective protection of human rights. (shrink)