What Is Special About Human Rights?

Ethics and International Affairs 25 (3):369-83 (2011)
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Abstract

Despite the prevalence of human rights discourse, the very idea or concept of a human right remains obscure. In particular, it is unclear what is supposed to be special or distinctive about human rights. In this paper, we consider two recent attempts to answer this challenge, James Griffin’s “personhood account” and Charles Beitz’s “practice-based account”, and argue that neither is entirely satisfactory. We then conclude with a suggestion for what a more adequate account might look like – what we call the “structural pluralist account” of human rights.

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Author Profiles

Christian Barry
Australian National University
Nicholas Southwood
Australian National University

References found in this work

The law of peoples.John Rawls - 1999 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Edited by John Rawls.
World Poverty and Human Rights.Thomas Pogge - 2002 - Ethics and International Affairs 19 (1):1-7.
The Law of Peoples.John Rawls - 2001 - Philosophical Quarterly 51 (203):246-253.
The Law of Peoples.John Rawls - 1993 - Critical Inquiry 20 (1):36-68.
The nature and value of rights.Joel Feinberg & Jan Narveson - 1970 - Journal of Value Inquiry 4 (4):243-260.

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