"An important contribution to contemporary jurisprudential debate and to legal thought more generally, Just Interpretations is far ahead of currently available work."--Peter Goodrich, author of Oedipus Lex "I was struck repeatedly by the clarity of expression throughout the book. Rosenfeld's description and criticism of the recent work of leading thinkers distinguishes his work within the legal theory genre. Furthermore, his own theory is quite original and provocative."--Aviam Soifer, author of Law and the Company We Keep.

This volume is about the positive, ambivalent, null and negative effects in various historical periods by various religious denominations within Christianity, Islam and Hinduism on the attitudes towards human rights of the first, second and third generation.

This book studies the history of intercultural human rights. It examines the foundational elements of human rights in the East and the West and provides a comparative analysis of the independent streams of thought originating from the two different geographic spaces. It traces the genesis of the idea of human rights back to ancient Indian and Greco-Roman texts, especially concepts such as the Rigvedic universal moral law, the Upanishadic narratives, the Romans' model of governance, (...) the rule of law, and administration of justice. It also looks at Cicero's concept of rights and duties which focuses on quality of compassion and fair play, and Seneca's expositions on mercy, empathy, justice and checks on the arbitrary exercise of power. An important contribution, this book fills a significant gap in the study of human rights. It will be useful for students and researchers of political science, ancient history, religion and civilizations, philosophy, history, human rights, governance, law, sociology, and South Asian studies. The book also caters to general readers interested in the history of human rights. (shrink)

This book deals with the thorny issue of human rights in different cultures and religions, especially in the light of bioethical issues. In this book, experts from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Daoism, Hinduism and Confucianism discuss the tension between their religious traditions and the claim of universality of human rights. The East-West contrast is particularly evident with regards to human rights. Some writers find the human rights language too individualistic and it is (...) foreign to major religions where the self does not exist in isolation, but is normally immersed in a web of relations and duties towards family, friends, religion community, and society. Is the human rights discourse a predominantly Western liberal ideal, which in bioethics is translated to mean autonomy and free choice? In today's democratic societies, laws have been drafted to protect individuals and communities against slavery, discrimination, torture or genocide. Yet, it appears unclear at what moment universal rights supersede respect for cultural diversity and pluralism. This collection of articles demonstrates a rich spectrum of positions among different religions, as they confront the ever more pressing issues of bioethics and human rights in the modern world. This book is intended for those interested in the contemporary debates on religious ethics, human rights, bioethics, cultural diversity and multiculturalism. (shrink)

In this article I explore the possibilities of experimentation as a non-foundational praxis for introducing novel ways of being into existence. Beginning with a discussion, following Bataille, of the excess of any thought, I argue that any action in the world is necessarily uncertain. Using the insights of Derridean deconstruction combined with Badiousian truth procedure I argue that experimentation offers a means for acting from this uncertain position. Experimentation takes advantage of the play and uncertainty of our understanding of the (...) world as a means of moving towards more progressive political positions. Normal 0 false false false EN-IE X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}. (shrink)

The Hindu ethic of cow protectionism is legislatively interpreted in many Indian states through the criminalisation of cow slaughter, and beef consumption, obscuring dairying’s direct role in the butchery of spent female and unproductive male bovines. Cow milk, however, is celebrated as sacred in scriptural and ritual Hinduism, and mobilised by commercial dairying, as well as by right-wing Hindu groups to advance the idea of a Hindu Indian nation. In order to fully protect cows from the harms of human (...) exploitation, it is vital to problematise milk as a benign, rightful product for humans to consume, including its use in Hindu beliefs, rituals and identity. The paper applies feminist vegan critiques to two Hindu legends commonly invoked to promote milk consumption: the boy-god Krishna’s great love for butter and the mythology of the gods and demons churning the Ocean of Milk to attain ambrosia. These critiques unsettle the core relationship of the Hindu to the cow as a lactating mother and provoke the idea that the original sacred milk in Hinduism in fact is plant-based and vegan. (shrink)

Erudite and timely, this book is a key contribution to the renewal of radical theory and politics.

Those seeking to lead a spiritual life, or just wondering how to become more spiritual may become inspired towards serving others, or giving Seva (selfless service). To learn how to serve God one might emulate spiritual people, study with spiritual teachers, or look to different types of religion and different types of yoga. But finding spiritual guidance on the topic of Seva is not always easy. One might be left wondering, “Is service to humanity a higher means to make a (...) donation – or should I simply donate to charity? What are the best charities to donate to, or to serve?” Or one might ask, “How does Seva support my spiritual development? Is there spiritual power and spiritual transformation to be gained through it?” In the book “Right Understanding To Help Others: Benevolence”, Gnani Purush (embodiment of Self knowledge) Dada Bhagwan offers precise understanding about people helping others and the many benefits Seva has upon one’s spiritual growth. Dadashri explains that happiness begins from the moment one begins serving others and that, in offering Seva, one’s life will never lack for material comfort and happiness. Among the myriad of spiritual books available today, “Right Understanding To Help Others: Benevolence” is a unique and invaluable resource. (shrink)

A. Belden Fields invites people to think more deeply about human rights in this book in an attempt to overcome many of the traditional arguments in the human rights literature. He argues that human rights should be reconceptualized in a holistic way to combine philosophical, historical, and empirical-practical dimensions. Human rights are viewed not as a set of universal abstractions but rather as a set of past and ongoing social practices rooted in (...) the claims and struggles of peoples against what they consider to be political, economic, or social domination. By aptly showing how a people’s fight for recognition is often closely tied to rights claims, Fields argues that these connections to identity can help bridge the gulf between universalistic and cultural relativistic arguments in the human rights debate. (shrink)

It is our job now - the job of this book - to influence and develop the unsettled discourse of human rights so as to complete the incomplete idea.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Why People Matter: A Christian Engagement with Rival Views of Human Significance ed. by John F. KilnerLaura AlexanderWhy People Matter: A Christian Engagement with Rival Views of Human Significance Edited by John F. Kilner grand rapids, mi: baker academic, 2017. 240 pp. $26.99Although Why People Matter does not use the word, it is an apologetic for the Christian faith and ethical tradition. Its argument begins with (...) a moral intuition that the authors take to be near universal: "people matter." If Christian theological and ethical thought can be shown to explain and shore up the notion that [End Page 190] "people matter" better than other ethical outlooks—and the authors believe it can—then the work will have (1) established a proper moral foundation for holding and acting on the conviction that people matter and (2) provided a reasoned argument for why Christianity as a fundamental belief system is better and truer than the other ethical systems examined.The text of Why People Matter is accessible and well written. The essays weave together coherently around two central ideas: each human person has inherent, inalienable dignity, and Christianity is the truest way of understanding and acting on that conviction. To demonstrate what Christianity has to offer, the book begins (after a summative introduction by Kilner) with a set of essays describing five ethical outlooks: utilitarianism, collectivism, individualism, naturalism, and transhumanism. In each, a different author lays out an ethical foundation and concept of the outlook, shows how the concept illuminates why "people matter," explains why it may seem compelling, and argues that it fails to grasp something crucial about why people matter and how to live as if they matter. As Kilner puts it, "each [outlook] recognizes and champions something important that is missing in other ways of thinking. However, each is dangerously reductionistic by making that missing element the all-encompassing focus of its approach" (190).Next, Kilner examines the Christian conviction that every human being is made in the image of God. He argues that this conviction, rightly understood, provides the only adequate foundation for the idea that "people matter." Respect for the image of God leads to proper respect for the human rights of others. Following this, David Gushee analyzes biblical passages and themes to argue that encounters with human beings are always also encounters with God; thus, we must treat people accordingly.Why People Matter accomplishes its purpose as an apologetic, and it seems especially likely to help committed Christians understand how their moral convictions can hold up in debates with common Western philosophical ethical outlooks. A wise friend once described C. S. Lewis (referenced several times in the work) as "a master of convincing Christians that what they already believe is true." That sort of persuasion is one of the appropriate goals of apologetic, and Why People Matter seems likely to achieve it.I have two comments on areas where readers may come away unsatisfied. First, the contributors' descriptions of the ethical outlooks they discuss are necessarily brief; those who hold these outlooks would likely wish to quibble with or nuance their arguments. Second, the work addresses only Western philosophical outlooks; the authors do not engage non-Christian religious traditions. In the spirit of interreligious cooperation, this is an excellent decision: frankly, I would not want to read a work that spent several chapters explaining why Christian ethical thought is superior to the ethical thought of, say, Hinduism or Judaism. But the work does leave unanswered, and unasked, the question [End Page 191] of whether a reader who does come to reject individualism, transhumanism, and so on might not just as well embrace Islam or Buddhism as Christianity.That said, this is an engaging work on the title question. It traces the basic contours of certain ethical outlooks, shows their strengths and potential weaknesses, and argues for a deep understanding, based in Christian Scripture and ethical thinking, of why people matter.Laura AlexanderUniversity of Nebraska at OmahaCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The criticism that voluntary codes of conduct are ineffective can be met by giving greater centrality to human rights in such codes. Provided the human rights obligations of multinational corporations are interpreted as moral obligations specifically tailored to the situation of multinational corporations, this could serve to bring powerful moral force to bear on MNCs and could provide a legitimating basis for NGO monitoring and persuasion. Approached in this way the human rights obligations of (...) MNCs can be taken to include support for political as well as economic rights. This will go some way towards filling the regulatory gap created by the difficulty of controlling the activities of corporations operating globally. However, such a proposal will require a measure of ‘meta-regulation’ whereby the operations of MNCs are legally required to be sufficiently transparent to create the conditions for effective external moral scrutiny. (shrink)

This paper tries to show that there is a shift in the meaning of toleration. The traditional meaning of toleration, understood as endurance, is giving way to a more positive understanding of the concept. This is because the traditional meaning of toleration ill-fits with values like the intrinsic worth of human beings, universal rights, etc. Especially in pluralistic societies, endurance of the Other is becoming increasingly unacceptable; minorities and their defendants demand respect, acceptance, and appreciation of the Other. (...) The first section delivers a framework of the general meaning of liberal toleration. Here, the shift in meaning will be highlighted. In the second section, I will try to situate Radhakrishnan’s views within this debate. (shrink)

This volume synthesizes these different approaches and demonstrates how anthropologists have engaged with human rights as committed activists, empirical ...

Human rights debates neglect social rights. This paper defends one fundamentally important, but largely unacknowledged social human right. The right is both a condition for and a constitutive part of a minimally decent human life. Indeed, protection of this right is necessary to secure many less controversial human rights. The right in question is the human right against social deprivation. In this context, ‘social deprivation’ refers not to poverty, but to genuine, interpersonal, (...) social deprivation as a persisting lack of minimally adequate opportunities for decent human contact and social inclusion. Such deprivation is endured not only in arenas of institutional segregation by prisoners and patients held in long-term solitary confinement and quarantine, but also by persons who suffer less organised forms of persistent social deprivation. The human right against social deprivation can be fleshed out both as a civil and political right and as a socio-economic right. The defence for it faces objections familiar to human rights theory such as undue burdensomeness, unclaimability, and infeasibility, as well as some less familiar objections such as illiberality, intolerability, and ideals of the family. All of these objections can be answered. (shrink)

What should we make of claims by members of other groups to have moralities different from our own? Human Rights in Chinese Thought gives an extended answer to this question in the first study of its kind. It integrates a full account of the development of Chinese rights discourse - reaching back to important, though neglected, origins of that discourse in 17th and 18th century Confucianism - with philosophical consideration of how various communities should respond to contemporary (...) Chinese claims about the uniqueness of their human rights concepts. The book elaborates a plausible kind of moral pluralism and demonstrates that Chinese ideas of human rights do indeed have distinctive characteristics, but it nonetheless argues for the importance and promise of cross-cultural moral engagement. (shrink)

Is it defensible to use the concept of a right? Can we justify this concept's central place in modern moral and legal thinking, or does it unjustifiably side-line those who do not qualify as right-holders? Rowan Cruft brings together a new account of the concept of a right. Moving beyond the traditional 'interest theory' and 'will theory', he defends a distinctive role for the concept: it is appropriate to our thinking about fundamental moral duties springing from the good of the (...) right-holder. This has important implications for the idea of 'natural' moral rights-that is, rights that exist independently of anyone's recognising that they do. Cruft argues that only rights that exist primarily for the sake of the right-holder can qualify as natural in this sense.In its relation to property, however, matters are far more complicated because much property is groundable only by common or collective goods beyond the right-holder's own good. For such property, Cruft argues that a non-rights property system-that resembles modern markets but is not conceived in terms of rights-would be preferable. The result of this study is a partial vindication of the rights concept that is more supportive of human rights than many of their critics might expect, and is surprisingly doubtful about property as an individual right. (shrink)

Using the accounts of Gewirth and Griffin as examples, the article criticises accounts of human rights as those are understood in human rights practices, which regard them as rights all human beings have in virtue of their humanity. Instead it suggests that (with Rawls) human rights set the limits to the sovereignty of the state, but criticises Rawls conflation of sovereignty with legitimate authority. The resulting conception takes human rights, like (...) other rights, to be contingent on social conditions, and in particular on the nature of the international system. (shrink)

International business faces a host of difficult moral conflicts. It is tempting to think that these conflicts can be morally resolved if we gained full knowledge of the situations, were rational enough, and were sufficiently objective. This paper explores the view that there are situations in which people in business must confront the possibility that they must compromise some of their important principles or values in order to protect other ones. One particularly interesting case that captures this kind of situation (...) is that of Google and its operations in China. In this paper, I examine the situation Google faces as part of the larger issue of moral compromise and integrity in business. Though I look at Google, this paper is just as much about the underlying or background views Google faces that are at work in business ethics. In the process, I argue the following: First, the framework Google has used to respond to criticisms of its actions does not successfully or obviously address the important ethical issues it faces. Second, an alternative ethical account can be presented that better addresses these ethical and human rights questions. However, this different framework brings the issue of moral compromise to the fore. This is an approach filled with dangers, particularly since it is widely held that one ought never to compromise one’s moral principles. Nevertheless, I wish to propose that there may be a place for moral compromise in business under certain conditions, which I attempt to specify. (shrink)

In 2016, the United Nation’s General Assembly adopted a non-binding resolution regarding ‘The Promotion, Protection and Enjoyment of Human Rights on the Internet’. At the heart of this resolution is the UN’s concern that ‘rights that people have offline must also be protected online.’ While the UN thus recognises the importance of the Internet, it does so problematically selectively by focusing on protecting existing offline rights online. I argue instead that Internet access is itself a moral (...) human right that requires that everyone has unmonitored and uncensored access to this global medium, which should be publicly provided free of charge for those unable to afford it. Rather than being a mere luxury, Internet access should be considered a universal entitlement because it is necessary for people to be able to lead minimally decent lives. Accepting this claim transforms our conception of the Internet from a technology to that of a basic right. (shrink)

Despite being a seemingly straightforward moral concept (that all humans have certain rights by virtue of their humanity), human rights is a contested concept in theory and practice. Theorists debate (among other things) the meaning of “rights,” the priority of rights, whether collective rights are universal, the foundations of rights, and whether there are universal human rights at all. These debates are of relatively greater interest to theorists; however, a given meaning (...) of “human rights” implies a corresponding theory of change and through that can be an important guide to the practice of human rights activists and their funders. In practice, any organization can describe their work as “rights based.” This article clarifies the practices of human rights activists and their funders that are consistent with a theory of human rights as (1) universal, (2) interdependent across groups and categories of people, (3) indivisible across issue areas and claims, and (4) measured by the enjoyment of rights. (shrink)

This volume collects Allen Buchanan's previously published articles with a focus on ethics and international law, specifically with regard to human rights, the legitimacy of international institutions, and the ethics of force across borders. The work fits together tightly in its systematic interconnections, and collectively it makes the case for a holistic and systematic approach to issues that are at the forefront of current discussions in political and legal philosophy- issues that have traditionally been seen as separate.

From the diverse work and often competing insights of women's human rights activists, Brooke Ackerly has written a feminist and a universal theory of human rights that bridges the relativists' concerns about universalizing from particulars and the activists' commitment to justice. Unlike universal theories that rely on shared commitments to divine authority or to an 'enlightened' way of reasoning, Ackerly's theory relies on rigorous methodological attention to difference and disagreement. She sets out human rights (...) as at once a research ethic, a tool for criticism of injustice and a call to recognize our obligations to promote justice through our actions. This book will be of great interest to political theorists, feminist and gender studies scholars and researchers of social movements. (shrink)

This timely book by internationally regarded scholar of ethics and social/political philosophy, Michael Boylan, focuses on the history, application and significance of human rights in the West and China. Boylan engages the key current philosophical debates prevalent in human rights discourse today and draws them together to argue for the existence of natural, universal human rights. Arguing against the grain of mainstream philosophical beliefs, Boylan asserts that there is continuity between human rights (...) and natural law and that human beings require basic, essential goods for minimum action. These include food, clean water and sanitation, clothing, shelter and protection from bodily harm, including basic healthcare. The achievement of this goal, Boylan demonstrates, will require significant resource allocation and creative methods of implementation involving public and private institutions. Combining technical argument with four fictional narratives about human rights, the book invites readers to engage with the most important aspects of the discipline. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Cross‐Cultural Perspectives on Human Rights Democratic Participation in the Cultural Context Development as a Process of Self‐Enhancement from Within Conclusion.

What grounds human rights? How do we determine that something is a genuine human right? This chapter offers a new answer: human beings have human rights to the fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life. The fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life are certain goods, capacities, and options that human beings qua human beings need whatever else they qua individuals might need in order to pursue a characteristically good human life. (...) This chapter explains how this Fundamental Conditions Approach is better than James Griffin’s Agency Approach as well as Martha Nussbaum’s Central Capabilities Approach. It also shows how it can be compatible with the increasingly popular Political Conceptions of human rights defended by John Rawls, Charles Beitz, and Joseph Raz. (shrink)

This article calls for a paradigm shift in the language, theory and practice of human rights: it calls for human rights to be reconceptualized as sentient rights. It argues that human rights are not qualitatively distinct from the basic entitlements of other sentient creatures, and that attempts to differentiate human rights by appealing to something distinctive about humanity, their unique political function or their universality ultimately fail. Finally, the article claims that (...) moving to sentient rights will not lead to intractable conflicts between rights, but to a more inclusive, fair and rationally defensible normative enterprise. (shrink)

The first IVF baby was born in the 1970s. Less than 20 years later, we had cloning and GM food, and information and communication technologies had transformed everyday life. In 2000, the human genome was sequenced. More recently, there has been much discussion of the economic and social benefits of nanotechnology, and synthetic biology has also been generating controversy. This important volume is a timely contribution to increasing calls for regulation - or better regulation - of these and other (...) new technologies. Drawing on an international team of legal scholars, it reviews and develops the role of human rights in the regulation of new technologies. Three controversies at the intersection between human rights and new technology are given particular attention. First, how the expansive application of human rights could contribute to the creation of a brave new world of choice, where human dignity is fundamentally compromised; second, how new technologies, and our regulatory responses to them, could be a threat to human rights; and, third, how human rights could be used to create better regulation of these technologies. (shrink)

While human rights law has evolved to provide guidance to governments in realizing human rights in public health emergencies, the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the foundations of human rights in global health governance. Public health responses to the pandemic have undermined international human rights obligations to realize the rights to health and life, human rights that underlie public health, and international assistance and cooperation. As governments prepare for revisions of (...) global health law, new opportunities are presented to harmonize global health law and human rights law, strengthening rights-based governance to respond to future threats. (shrink)

Introduction: human rights in healthcare -- A right to treatment? the allocation of resouces in the National Health Service -- Ensuring quality healthcare: an issue of rights or duties? -- Autonomy and consent in medical treatment -- Treating incompetent patients: beneficence, welfare and rights -- Medical confidentiality and the right to privacy -- Property right in the body -- Medically assisted conception and a right to reproduce? -- Termination of pregnancy: a conflict of rights -- (...) Pregnancy and freedom of choice -- The right to life at the end of life -- The law and ethics of assisted dying: is there a right to die? (shrink)

Human rights have become one of the most important moral concepts in global political life over the last 60 years. Charles Beitz, one of the world's leading philosophers, offers a compelling new examination of the idea of a human right.

What does it mean to defend moral cosmopolitanism in terms of human rights? I outline ‘human rights cosmopolitanism’, explain the role of equality in giving content to this conception, and defend the liberal view of human rights against the restricted view by considering – and responding to – several arguments for remaining neutral between a range of cultural and ideological perspectives on the demands of social justice and political legitimacy. I defend the liberal view (...) that a conception of human rights should not remain neutral on controversial questions of justice and legitimacy. (shrink)

In March 1993, in preparation for the United Nations World Conference on Human Rights, representatives from the states of Asia gathered in Bangkok to formulate their position on this emotive issue. The result of their discussions was the Bangkok declaration. They accepted the concept of universal standards in human rights, but declared that these standards could not overridet he unique Asian regional and cultural differences, the requirements of economic development, nor the privileges of sovereignty. : The (...) difficult and powerful dichotomies raised in Bangkok, and their particular relevance to China, are explored in the ten essays contained in this book. The underlying political, cultural, philosophical, legal and economic issues which cut across the human rights spectrum are also considered. The writiers themselves are Chinese and Hong Kong scholars, or leading political figures who are involved in the current human rights debate. The ultimate goal of the book is not to resolve the issues raised in Bangkok, but to expose some contours of discussion in a way that is fresh and accessible. (shrink)

In this article I present the phenomenological tradition as a new grounding for human rights as universal rights. The hypothesis defended is to conciliate Husserl’s phenomenological method and Reinach’s a priori law in order to offer a new grounding to human rights. In order to combine Husserl and Reinach’s ideas, I propose to expand the comprehension of a priori. It would be present as eidos of each object and I name it as material a priori; (...) it also be present in the eidetic relations and I name it as formal a priori. Yet the object would have an essence, a necessary content, a material a priori, and necessary states of affairs, necessary relations and connections, a formal a priori. Reinach, in The A priori Foundations of the Civil Law, describes eidetic relations, such as, the relation between promise, claim and obligation. I propose three eidetic universalities to ground law, these are what I will call human rights. I also face a few difficulties presented by DuBois and De Vecchi derived from the amoral approach of a priori laws. Then, I highlight the difference between this proposition and Albert’s. Finally, I defend the proposition that a priori laws are beyond natural and positive laws. (shrink)

PovertyPoverty is a serious threat for human beings and their well-beingWell-being. People are simply unable to live a good life when they are faced with severe problems, e.g., bad education, poor housing, poor sanitationSanitation, poor hygiene, or malnourishment. However, one of the most urgent problems with regard to poverty is badHealth/ healthcare, right toaccess access to primary health careGlobal healthcare and the allocation of health care resources for millions of people around the world. These people are deprived of (...) class='Hi'>human flourishing, and life is for them, in general, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In this chapter, I present an ethical argument that shows that people have a moral right to primary health carePrimary health care, and that wealthy developed countries are morally obligated to help the needy. Primary health care, and hence access to it is, as I will argue, a global public goodGlobal public good that is protected by human dignity and the human rightHuman rights of protection from unwarranted bodily harmHarm. (shrink)

This note on human rights practice observes that some pedagogical methods in human rights education can have the effect of making human rights violations both seem to be performed by abnormal, bad actors and seem to occur in places far away from US classrooms. This effect is not intended by instructors; a methodological corrective would be helpful to human rights education. This note provides a corrective by suggesting two practices: (1) a pedagogical (...) emphasis on what the Martinican philosopher Édouard Glissant calls ‘entanglements’, or the way in which normal, local actions are tied to global consequences in our contemporary world; and (2) a pedagogical exercise of performing a phenomenology of, or first-person reflection on, daily life as it relates to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The emphasis and exercise work together to implicate the actor in larger patterns of human rights violations and protections. Overall, the emphasis and exercise prevent an insidious insinuation of some human rights education: that human rights violations are to be theorized in the global North but suffered in the global South. (shrink)

What are human rights? What makes a particular human rights claim ‘genuine’ or ‘valid’? These are difficult questions with which current philosophical literature on human rights is concerned. They are also the same kind of questions that legal philosophers asked about Law throughout the 20th century. Drawing from the similarities between the two fields, I attempt to do with the concept of human rights something similar to what Ronald Dworkin accomplished with that (...) of Law in Law’s Empire. First, I offer a critique of the two dominant perspectives on human rights—the Orthodox and Political views—that is similar in character to Dworkin’s Semantic Sting objection to Legal Positivism. Second, I sketch an alternative, Dworkinian-inspired framework that seeks to develop the notion of human rights as an interpretive concept. According to this framework, different accounts of human rights are to be understood as expressing different interpretations of the point (or purpose) of human rights practice. (shrink)

This paper explores the connections between human rights, human dignity, and power. The idea of human dignity is omnipresent in human rights discourse, but its meaning and point is not always clear. It is standardly used in two ways, to refer to a normative status of persons that makes their treatment in terms of human rights a proper response, and a social condition of persons in which their human rights are (...) fulfilled. This paper pursues three tasks. First, it provides an analysis of the content and an interpretation of the role of the idea of human dignity in current human rights discourse. The interpretation includes a pluralist view of human interests and dignity that avoids a narrow focus on rational agency. Second, this paper characterizes the two aspects of human dignity in terms of capabilities. Certain general human capabilities are among the facts that ground status-dignity, and the presence of certain more specific capabilities constitutes condition-dignity. Finally, this paper explores how the pursuit of human rights and human dignity links to distributions and uses of power. Since capabilities are a form of power, and human rights are in part aimed at respecting and promoting capabilities, human rights involve empowerment. Exploring the connections between human rights, capabilities, and empowerment provides resources to defend controversial human rights such as the right to democratic political participation, and to respond to worries about the feasibility of their fulfillment. This paper also argues that empowerment must be coupled with solidaristic concern in order to respond to unavoidable facts of social dependency and vulnerability. (shrink)

Even as human rights provide the most widely shared moral language of our time, they also spark highly contested debates among scholars and policymakers. When should states protect human rights? Does the global war on terror necessitate the violation of some rights? Are food, housing, and health care valid human rights? Debating Human Rights introduces the theory and practice of international human rights by examining fourteen controversies in the field. (...) Daniel Chong presents the major arguments on both sides of each debate, encouraging readers to think critically and form their own opinions. Designed for classroom use, the structure of the book makes it easy for students to become familiar with the major political and legal actors in the global human rights system and to understand the practical challenges of protecting civil, political, social, and economic rights. (shrink)

Translations of Chinese writing on human rights from throughout the twentieth century, with introductions.

In a Society of Peoples as Rawls conceives it, human rights function as “criteria for toleration.” This paper defends the conception of human rights that appears in Rawls’ The Law of Peoples as normatively and theoretically adequate. I claim that human rights function as criteria for determining whether or not a given society or legal system can be tolerated. As such, “human rights” are not themselves basic facts or judgments or ascriptions, but (...) rather the means by which we collectively attempt to secure public criteria for evaluating what can and cannot be tolerated. Human rights are one expression of the fundamental value commitments of Political Liberalism to reasonableness and tolerance. If correct, this account provides good reasons for concluding that Political Liberalism has a normatively adequate conception of global justice. (shrink)

An interpretative history of human rights in Africa, exploring indigenous rights traditions, anti-slavery, anti-colonialism, post-colonial violations and pro-democracy movements.