The present paper argues that a right to work, defined as social and legal guarantees to fair conditions of employment, should be an essential part of a democratic state with market arrangements. This argument proceeds along the following lines. First, I reconstruct an account of rights that defends the “correlativity” thesis of rights and duties. The basic idea is that a social member’s legitimate demand to something of value, such as gainful employment, implies duties on the part of (...) others to respect and fulfill it. These duties include the following with regard to that demand: avoiding actions that cause the harm, protecting it against standard threats, and otherwise providing aid in case it is deprived. Second, I sketch an outline of what a right to work will entail in terms of the correlative duties just described. This means that respect and fulfillment of the demand will require both social members and the democratic state alike to guarantee fair conditions of employment: first, by forbearing from actions that deprive members of access to work; and second, by protecting members against threats of deprivation and aiding them when they are so deprived. Third, I answer some ethical and empirical objections to the idea of a right to work: that it violates the legal rights of owners and employers, fails to impart self-respect, lacks economic efficiency, and erodes human capital by undermining competitive incentives. Finally, I make some concluding observations that a democratic right to work so conceived is ethically and economically superior to alternative arrangements that neither respect nor fulfill these correlative duties to avoid harm, protect against threats, and provide aid in cases of deprivation. (shrink)

There is widespread agreement that the most serious and debilitating contemporary social problem in the developed capitalist world is the problem of enforced or involuntary unemployment. The growth in mass unemployment in the 1970s and 80s has produced a renewal of the demand by the labour and trade union movement1 for the implementation of a ‘right to work’; presumably in the belief that the official recognition and legal enforcement of such a right would lead to the increased (...) availability of jobs. This campaigning slogan has sometimes emanated from the most unlikely sources. In his introduction to a published account of the 1971 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders occupation and work-in, entitledThe Right to Work, Mr Harold Wilson (then, significantly, in opposition) declared that ‘what the men of the Clyde proclaimed, and what I went to Clydeside to assert, was “the right to work”. And that principle cannot, and must not, be denied.’. (shrink)

I understand the claim that there is a right to work as the claim that involuntary unemployment is an injustice that requires of justice enforcement institutions to stop it. I argue that in present conditions of high productivity it is more consistent with the liberal tradition to proclaim a right to develop one’s capabilities than a right to work. The steps of my argument are: (1) An important though not the only reason for considering unemployment (...) unjust has been what I call the Promethean idea of society. (2) The Promethean idea is implied by the liberal idea of rights. (3) There are two conceptions of the Promethean idea, the centralist and the autonomous one. (4) Only the latter is acceptable. (5) Involuntary unemployment is unjust even if the dole is decently high. (6) The injustice of unemployment can be stopped only by institutions that enable everyone to use their capabilities in realizing the Promethean idea. (7) One such institution is basic income. (8) As employment is not necessary for survival, we should replace the right to work with a right to develop one’s capabilities. (shrink)

Labor rights are the first to come up for criticism when accounts of human rights are offered in response to philosophical questions about them, and notoriously so Article 24, which talks about `rest and leisure' and `period holidays with pay.' This study first tries to make it plausible why labor rights would appear on the Universal Declaration, and next articulates some philosophical objections to their presence there. The interesting question then is not so much how one could respond to the (...) objections, but to explore what commitments one needs to make to answer our question in a satisfactory manner. To make progress, we can contrast the idea of human rights with conceptions of them. Such conceptions offer answers to a set of philosophical questions about human rights. It would be rather unlikely for any such conception to emerge as the uniquely best philosophical account of human rights since disagreements among different conceptions are complex. What is sensible to ask then is what a conception of human rights would have to be like to count labor rights as human rights, and whether there is a conception of that sort. I offer one conception that I take to be plausible overall, and that does count labor rights as human rights. Or, that is: it does count a right to work as a human right, alas not in the strong interpretation according to which states must create jobs but in the weaker sense that states need to make sure people are not systematically excluded from employment, and are treated in certain ways at their place of work, and it does count a right to leisure as a human right, alas not a right to paid vacations. (shrink)

ALTHOUGH "CHILD LABOR" IS UNIVERSALLY CONDEMNED, CHILD WORK will be a feature of global life for the foreseeable future because many children without adequate access to the requisites of human dignity must work to gain them. With help from the recent work of John Wall, Mary M. Doyle Roche, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, and others, the author claims children's right to work in Ethna Regan's sense, as an expression of a "situated universal." Rights on this view (...) are real but contingent. They are means to protect universal human goods and vulnerabilities under attack in particular situations. In this case, a situated right to work protects children's flourishing in a global culture still shaped by liberal and capitalist institutions, even as it criticizes that culture's injustices and exclusions. (shrink)

It is, perhaps, a propitious time to discuss the economic rights of disabled persons. In recent years, the media in the United States have re-ported on such notable events as: students at the nation's only college for the deaf stage a successful protest campaign to have a deaf individual ap-pointed president of their institution; a book by a disabled British physicist on the origins of the universe becomes a best seller; a pitcher with only one arm has a successful rookie (...) season in major league baseball; a motion-picture actor wins an Oscar for his portrayal of a wheelchair-bound person, beating out another nominee playing another wheelchair-bound person; a cancer patient wins an Olympic gold medal in wrestling; a paralyzed mother trains her children to accept discipline by inserting their hands in her mouth to be gently bitten when punishment is due; and a paraplegic rock climber scales the sheer four-thousand-foot wall of Yosemite Valley's El Capitan. Most significantly, in 1990, the United States Congress passed an important bill – the Americans with Disabili-ties Act – extending to disabled people employment and access-related protections afforded to members of other disadvantaged groups by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (shrink)

Union security has long been an industrial relations controversy. While compulsory unionism supporters say it benefits the working class, right-to-work advocates denounce it as an unethical infringement of individual rights and freedom. Unfortunately, neither side has adequately addressed the shortcomings of their viewpoint, nor the broader worker concerns about effective representation beyond just "unionism". In this paper, we examine the ethical and practical problems of compulsory and voluntary unionism and propose a new resolution, compulsory proportional representation, that has (...) the advantages of: ensuring workers' freedom to associate or not associate, promoting freedom to contract, allowing free competition in representation in line with anti-trust principles, improving industrial peace and efficiency, enhancing fairness and social justice, and addressing the employer-employee power imbalance. It is superior to either voluntary unionism, which often lead to management unilateralism, or compulsory unionism, where workers are compelled to join unions against their will. (shrink)

In his ambitious paper, Risse addresses many important topics ranging from very general issues about what human rights are to quite specific questions about rights to work and leisure. I comment on four themes arranged in order of decreasing generality: Risse's understanding of what human rights are, Risse's suggestion that a conception of human rights should best be "basis-driven," Risse's particular basis-driven conception of human rights, and Risse's specific position on human rights relating to labor and leisure. What grounds (...) can Risse give us for accepting his revisionist understanding of human rights as membership rights, which is so dramatically at odds with fundamental fixed points that have been taken for granted in human rights disputes over the last 60 years or so? If Risse has his way, then the treatment of a human being by others raises human rights concerns only if she is a participant in the global order and only if her treatment is a matter of international concern. It is obvious how this understanding of human rights is welcome to those who seek to free their own conduct or their country's policies from human-rights constraints. Appealing to Risse's understanding, they will be able to block criticisms based on human rights by denying, for example, that the people of the Gaza Strip are members of the global order or by denying that the torture of Burmese citizens within Burma is a matter of international concern. For those whose human rights are in jeopardy, Risse's understanding of human rights could be a disaster. We should therefore examine very closely the arguments he may yet produce for his understanding and, unless they are hugely compelling, stick to the orthodox understanding of human rights as rights that all human beings have against all other human agents. (shrink)

ABSTRACT L. J. MacFarlane has contended that the right to strike is a keystone of democratic society. The right to strike is a right to free expression, association, assembly and power. And the right to strike is dependent upon the right to employment. MacFarlane denies that the right to employment is a universal right. I argue that unless the right to work is indeed universal MacFarlane's main contention is false. Forced unemployment (...) is, amongst other things, the denial of full citizen status, for the range of liberties that constitutes the right to strike is essential to full participation in democracy. It is only when the traditional liberty‐rights of free expression and striking are seen as being based upon such recipient rights as rights to media space and time and upon the right to work, that they can play their proper democratic role. This conception of those rights is missing from the work of Rawls and Nozick as well as from MacFarlane. (shrink)

The wide presence of the right to work in national and international legal texts contrasts with a lack of agreement about the concrete content of this right. According to the hegemonic interpretation, it consists of two elements: extension of wage labour and significant improvement of working conditions. However, if we study the history of right to work claims, especially from the French Revolution to 1848, we can notice that the meaning of this right was (...) rather wider in the past. Rescuing the historical significance of the right to work may help to face the problem of the future of work. In particular, and unlike what might seem at first sight, the claim that everyone should have his or her right to work guaranteed can be a way of articulating and concretizing issues such as workplace democracy, the organization of domestic work or the transition to a sustainable society. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of an empirical study that reflects monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of some legal acts on the labour of the Republic of Lithuania. The analysis of legal documents at the national and international level is provided. A review of cognate studies conducted by foreign and Lithuanian researchers is presented and the professional situation of a Lithuanian teacher from the employee rights perspective is highlighted. The professional activities contexts and sectors, wherein systematic violations of teachers’ (...) rights to a healthy and safe working environment are possible, are distinguished. A lack of generalized scientific data of employee (especially teacher) working conditions, the actual security of relevant rights and its monitoring and evaluation is still felt both in the country and abroad. A contradiction between: a) insufficient research of the issue and b) its importance to science and practice, exactly presupposes the scientific problems of the empirical study presented in the given paper. The subject of the study: teachers’ rights to a healthy and safe working environment and a fair remuneration for their work. The objective of the study: to conduct monitoring and evaluation of the effective implementation of relevant legal norms and legal acts applying a written sociological survey. The study is based on the results of a mass country-wide written survey of teachers. (shrink)

It appears at least intuitively appropriate to claim that we owe it to victims to punish those who have wronged them. It also seems plausible to state that we owe it to society to punish those who have violated its norms. However, do we also owe punishment to perpetrators themselves? In other words, do those who commit crimes have a moral right to be punished? This work examines the sustainability of the right to be punished from the (...) standpoint of the two main theories of rights—the will and the interest conceptions. The right to be punished is shown to be largely indefensible on both accounts: on the will theory, the right to be punished conflicts with autonomy, and it can neither be claimed nor waived by a perpetrator; on the interest theory, a perpetrator’s interest in punishment, inasmuch as it exists, is not sufficient to ground a duty on the part of the state. (shrink)

Digital platform economy has radically changed the modes in which work is organized, stretching the functionality of legal environment of work and its governance. This article builds on a strand of labor law scholarship that advances the need to rethink the legal construction of work and work relationship in order to adapt it to the dynamically evolving socio-economic context. By applying a business and human rights lens to this process, this article confutes the mainstream argument that (...) labor rights guarantees remain contingent on an individual’s enjoying the status of an employee under national jurisdiction. We survey a largely underexamined conception of affording protection to platform workers under International Human Rights Law (IHRL). In doing so, we argue that the instruments of IHRL may in some respects be even better placed than that of national law, both strengthening and complementing areas where state protection is weak or non-existent. Through the right to just and favorable conditions of work perspective, we outline the non-contested, albeit partly poorly implemented obligations of states, as well as largely contentious and contested responsibilities of private actors such as digital platforms towards the rights-holders. We conclude by arguing that the leverage offered by IHRL in the struggle to curb a quasi-sovereign power of the platform largely outweighs the democratically motivated objections this avenue may raise. (shrink)

This paper argues that the deepening and widening of existing worker rights in work environment issues is a necessary condition to promote much needed reform in present day industry, and to reduce the frequency and severity rate of accidents and incidence of industrial disease.

Touching is an integral part of human behaviour; from the moment of birth until they die, people need to be touched and to touch others. Touching is an intimate action that implies an invasion of the individual's personal, private space. In ethical terms, the ques tion of touching is closely related to the patient's right to integrity and inviolability. The purpose of this study was to describe touching as it is experienced by elderly patients and nurses in long-term care. (...) Touching was approached as a form of commu nication and as an important part of nursing practice. The participants, 25 patients and 30 nurses, were interviewed using a semistructured schedule. The data were analysed using the method of content analysis. The patients experienced touching by nurses as gentle, comforting and important. The nurses, for their part, experienced touching by patients as easy and natural. The patients rarely touched nurses more than was neces sary. In some cases, nurses had to cope with violent touching by patients. Some women nurses interpreted touches by male patients as having a sexual nature and as annoying. This had taught male patients to avoid touching nurses. On the other hand, friendly and grateful touches by patients were very important to nurses. When used for emotional purposes only, touching presupposed a good relationship between nurses and their patients. Although touching is extremely common in nursing practice, there has been very little research into its meaning. More work is therefore needed to explore the role and meaning of touching in nursing. (shrink)

In _Pharmaceutical Freedom_ Professor Flanigan argues we ought to grant people self-medication rights for the same reasons we respect people’s right to give (or refuse to give) informed consent to treatment. Despite being the most comprehensive argument in favour of self-medication written to date, Flanigan’s _Pharmaceutical Freedom_ leaves a number of questions unanswered, making it unclear how the safe-guards Flanigan incorporates to protect people from harming themselves would work in practice. In this paper, I extend Professor Flanigan’s account (...) by discussing a hypothetical case to illustrate how these safe-guards could work together to protect people from harms caused by their own ignorance or incompetence. (shrink)

The moral right to keep and bear arms is entailed by the moral right of self-defense. We argue that the ownership and use of firearms is a reasonable means of exercising these rights. Given their defensive value, there is a strong presumption in favor of enacting civil rights to keep and bear arms ranging from handguns to ‘assault rifles.’ Thus, states are morally obliged as a matter of justice to recognize basic liberties for firearm ownership and usage. Throughout (...) this paper we build upon the relevant criminological and social science research in addition to the work of other philosophers who have in recent years argued in favor of gun rights. Although we believe the statistical evidence supports our case, our argument is primarily non-consequentialist. We do, however, address consequentialist objections in the last section of this paper. (shrink)

Arguments from human dignity feature prominently in the Lethal Autonomous Weapons moral feasibility debate, even though their exists considerable controversy over their role and soundness and the notion of dignity remains under-defined. Drawing on the work of Dieter Birnbacher, I fix the sub-discourse as referring to the essential value of human persons in general, and to postulated moral rights of combatants not covered within the existing paradigm of the International Humanitarian Law in particular. I then review and critique dignity-based (...) arguments against LAWS: argument from faulty targeting process, argument from objectification, argument from underappreciation of the value of human life and the argument from the absence of mercy. I conclude that the argument from the absence of mercy is the only dignity-based argument that is both valid and irreducible to another class of arguments within the debate, and that it offers insufficient justification for a global ban on LAWS. (shrink)

This article examines theories of ocean rights based on the works of Hugo Grotius and Samuel von Pufendorf. Grotius's object‐centred view uses features of the natural world to justify claims to external objects. I show that Grotius's view is inadequate, because it relies on an outdated claim that oceanic resources are sufficiently abundant for anybody to use. Further, adaptations of his view are wanting, because they either rely on arbitrary distinctions or disregard the values of cultural minorities. Pufendorf's relational view (...) constructs rights through the exercise of human will. While Pufendorf believes that agreements create rights, he also argues that property rights can be unilaterally acquired from the commons without express consent from others. The relational view is a viable alternative to the object‐centred view, because it both delimits territorial claims over the ocean to a ‘modest’ size and also respects cultural variability. A major aim of this article is to present Pufendorf's theory of territorial rights extended over oceans and to demonstrate how it is useful for assessing contemporary disputes. In the final sections, I apply the relational view to Canadian claims to the Northwest Passage, and I also sketch implications for assessing expanding claims to the seabed. (shrink)

Background The world is urbanizing rapidly; more than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas, leading to significant transition in lifestyles and social behaviours globally. While offering many advantages, urban environments also concentrate health risks and introduce health hazards for the poor. In Bangladesh, although many public policies are directed towards equity and protecting people’s rights, these are not comprehensively and inclusively applied in ways that prioritize the health rights of citizens. The country is thus facing many issues (...) that raise moral and ethical concerns. Methods A narrative literature review was conducted between October 2016 and November 2017 on issues related to social justice, health, and human rights in urban Bangladesh. The key questions discussed here are: i) ethical dilemmas and inclusion of the urban poor to pursue social justice; and ii) the ethical obligations and moral responsibilities of the state and non-state sectors in serving Bangladesh’s urban poor. Using a Rawlsian theory of equality of opportunity to ensure social justice, we identified key health-related ethical issues in the country’s rapidly changing urban landscape, especially among the poor. Results We examined ethical dilemmas in Bangladesh’s health system through the rural–urban divide and the lack of coordination among implementing agencies. The unregulated profusion of the private sector and immoral practices of service providers result in high out-of-pocket expenditures for urban poor, leading to debt and further impoverishment. We also highlight policy and programmatic gaps, as well as entry points for safeguarding the right to health for Bangladeshi citizens. Conclusions The urban health system in Bangladesh needs a reform in which state and non-state actors should work together, understanding and acknowledging their moral responsibilities for improving the health of the urban poor by engaging multiple sectors. The social determinants of health should be taken into account when formulating policies and programs to achieve universal health coverage and ensure social justice for the urban poor in Bangladesh. (shrink)

This paper explores connections between social rights and labour rights within a human rights framework. Social human rights tend to be marginalized both in philosophical debates about human rights and international human rights doctrine and practice. This paper brings social human rights into focus and argues that they play an important though neglected role in shaping the content of labour human rights, in particular the human right to just and favourable conditions of work. The implications for the content (...) of this right are elaborated, and the paper concludes with some reflections on the relevance of social human rights in recent struggles for stable and predictable working hours. (shrink)

Aboriginal Australians have an intrinsic relationship to Country, kinship and community. The processes related to colonisation have decimated traditional lifestyles, ecology and even families. The challenge for energy engineers lies in the ability to reconcile the profession of engineering with the contemporary and traditional cultural and physical needs of Aboriginal people. A discussion around Aboriginal peoples’ most deeply held values will be linked to both global and professional ethical canons. This discussion has implications for Aboriginal and Indigenous peoples globally. A (...) fictitious case study—the ‘Warrigal Downs Energy Hub’—provides us with a hypothetical project to which we can link both examples and frameworks. Our team of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators and engineers provides us with a right, wrong and even better way to work sensitively, meaningfully and reciprocally with Aboriginal people in Australia and, indeed, globally. (shrink)

Taking the work of Amartya Sen as a point of departure, a case is made that there may be no single policy with as many potential benefits as a guaranteed job at a living wage–benefits package for every person ready and willing to work. The case is outlined in 4 arguments. Along the way, numerous social and economic costs of unemployment and underemployment and benefits of full employment are catalogued. Reference is also made to how the right (...) to employment is supported by a variety of arguments for social justice, an area in which Sen has made important contributions. (shrink)

One of the distinctive features of Anna Julia Cooper’s political philosophy and philosophy of education is the frequency with which she uses corporeal and organicist imagery to support her analyses...

Among the rights of workers articulated in Catholic social thought is the right to associate or the right to form associations of working persons. This right has been discussed in Church documents since the time of the publication of Rerum Novarum in 1891. It is this right that is addressed in this paper.

We examine the issues concerning the legality and ethicality of the Second Amendment right to bear arms balanced by the employer's duty to provide a safe workplace for its employees. Two court rulings highlight this balancing act: McDonald et al. v. City of Chicago et al. and District of Columbia v. Heller. “Stand Your Ground” and “Castle Doctrine” laws in the recent Trayvon Martin shooting on February 26, 2012 are also applicable. Various ethical frameworks examine the firearms debate by (...) viewing the Second Amendment from three perspectives. These include a pro‐gun perspective drawing upon libertarianism and fundamental rights; a moderate gun perspective drawing upon consequentialism and stakeholder theory; and finally, an anti‐gun perspective drawing upon a Public Health Ethics and peace ethics approach. We explore the issue of gun control from a business perspective as employers face ethical decisions in responding to legislation that allows guns in the workplace and/or in employer parking lots while still being responsible to provide a safe workplace for their employees. We make recommendations regarding how companies should manage by proactively avoiding legal challenges to employees' rights to own and carry guns into the workplace. This includes emphasis on enhanced security, Human Resource policies and monitoring rapidly changing laws. (shrink)

One prominent argument in international law and religious thought for abolishing capital punishment is that it violates individuals’ right to life. Notably, this _right-to-life argument_ emerged from normative and legal frameworks that recognize deadly force against aggressors as justified when necessary to stop their unjust threat of grave harm. Can capital punishment be necessary in this sense—and thus justified defensive killing? If so, the right-to-life argument would have to admit certain exceptions where executions are justified. Drawing on (...) class='Hi'>work by Hugo Bedau, I identify a thought experiment where executions are justified defensive killing but explain why they cannot be in our world. A state’s obligations to its prisoners include the _obligation to use nonlethal incapacitation_ (ONI), which applies as long as prisoners pose no imminent threat. ONI precludes executions for reasons of future dangerousness. By subjecting the right-to-life argument to closer scrutiny, this article ultimately places it on firmer ground. (shrink)

I recall an old man selling Paul Lafargue’s Right to be Lazy on a busy street in the Latin Quarter in the 1980s. At the time, I was writing then my first book on the history of work time and leisure and felt by seeing this strange and grumpy man so energetically promoting the nearly forgotten work of Marx’s son-in-law somehow vindicated in my efforts. Paul Lafargue’s pamphlet makes an interesting assumption: The “natural” state of human being (...) was relaxation and that only a century or so of propaganda convinced the naïve worker and labor movement to embrace the doctrine of the “right” to work. The industrial revolution had produced the craziness of workers’ overproduction and legions of savants and servants for the small utterly unbusy rich. Once freed from the illusion of the right to work, machines, Lafargue insisted, would liberate us all from the drudgery of labor and let us live as the ancient Greek philosophers had dreamed—but without the dependence upon slaves. Lafargue’s view was hardly unique for its day. Many in the late nineteenth century believed that overwork caused production gluts and the irrational excesses of the rich. Busyness was a false doctrine of modern capitalism that was devoted to endlessly extending and intensifying work. Before and after him, many fought to win freedom from busyness with the reduction of worktime. But Lafargue’s dream that mechanical progress would liberate humanity from labor hardly happened. Instead, the “overproduction” that ceaseless toil created was “absorbed” by mass consumption. Even the “wastefulness” of the rich and their minions came to be seen merely as indifferent contributions to the Gross Domestic Product. So what happened? (shrink)

Do citizens of liberal democratic states have a moral right to engage in civil disobedience? Famously, Joseph Raz argued that they do not. In this article, I defend his argument against some recent challenges, but show how it is tied to a particular model of civil disobedience. On this model, the purpose of civil disobedience is to protest and prevent particularly egregious violations of justice. A moral right to civil disobedience can be grounded on a different model, where (...) the function of civil disobedience is to identify and counterbalance democratic deficits. Against the widespread tendency amongst theorists of civil disobedience to want to defend civil disobedience as the exercise of a moral right, however, I do not then argue for the adoption of the democratic model. Whilst I acknowledge the reasons behind wanting a rights-based defence, and concede that different kinds of civil disobedience might have to be defended on different grounds, I sound a note of caution. The meta-theoretical relation between moral grounds and political function uncovered in this article works both ways. It should make theorists more mindful of the self-understanding to which a rights-based moral defence of civil disobedience commits protesters. (shrink)

Completing the translation of Derrida’s monumental work Right to Philosophy (the first part of which has already appeared under the title of Who’s Afraid of Philosophy?), Eyes of the University brings together many of the philosopher’s most important texts on the university and, more broadly, on the languages and institutions of philosophy. In addition to considerations of the implications for literature and philosophy of French becoming a state language, of Descartes’ writing of the Discourse on Method in French, (...) and of Kant’s and Schelling’s philosophies of the university, the volume reflects on the current state of research and teaching in philosophy and on the question of what Derrida calls a “university responsibility.” Examining the political and institutional conditions of philosophy, the essays collected here question the growing tendency to orient research and teaching towards a programmable and profitable end. The volume is therefore invaluable for the light it throws upon an underappreciated aspect of Derrida’s own engagement, both philosophical and political, in struggles against the stifling of philosophical research and teaching. As a founding member of the Research Group on the Teaching of Philosophy and as one of the conveners of the Estates General of Philosophy, Derrida was at the forefront of the struggle to preserve and extend the teaching of philosophy as a distinct discipline, in secondary education and beyond, in the face of conservative government education reforms in France. As one of the founders of the Collège International de Philosophie, he worked to provide a space for research in and around philosophy that was not accepted or legitimated in other institutions. Documenting and reflecting upon these engagements, Eyes of the University brings together some of the most important and incisive of Derrida’s works. (shrink)

This article offers a critical analysis of Blake’s ‘jurisdictional theory’ of the border control and, especially, its state-based methodology. It then draws on this analysis to discuss the merits of analysing global migration through the lens of ‘the right to exclude’. Blake’s theory demands serious attention in light of its promise to combine a normative account of exclusion with an uncontroversial descriptive account of the state. Despite its initial appeal, however, the theory is shown to face serious problems. First, (...) its central normative principle turns out to be able to yield an account of justified exclusion only at the cost of departing from the theory’s purported emphasis on the state. Second, and more importantly, its state-based methodology is shown to be unable to generate a convincing account of the legitimacy of border control, as opposed to the justice of exclusion. It is argued that this point is relevant for the analytical debate on immigration and borders more generally, in light of institutional phenomena that characterise the contemporary practice of border control. In this context, an excessive focus on the right to exclude can work to mask significant exercises of state power. (shrink)

Five leading thinkers on the concept of 'rights' in an era of rightlessness Sixty years ago, the political theorist Hannah Arendt, deprived of her German citizenship as a Jew and in exile from her country, observed that before people can enjoy any of the 'inalienable' Rights of Man--before there can be any specific rights to education, work, voting, and so on--there must first be such a thing as 'the right to have rights.' The concept received little attention at (...) the time, but in our age of refugee crises and extra-state war, the phrase has become the center of a crucial and lively debate. Here five leading thinkers from varied disciplines, including history, law, and politics, discuss the critical issue of the basis of rights and the meaning of radical democratic politics today. (shrink)

People's “right to truth” or their “right to know” about their government's human rights abuses is a growing consensus in human rights discourses and a fertile area of work in international and humanitarian law. In most discussions of this right to know the truth, it is commonly seen as requiring the state or international institutions to provide access to evidence of the violations. In this paper, I argue that such a right naturally has many epistemic (...) aspects, and the tools of social epistemology can be helpful in elucidating what such a right entails. As a beginning for this project, I draw on those resources to argue that the right to know the truth is only meaningful if it includes a right to understand the abuses, and that such understanding can only come through the development of community epistemic capacities. Given this, I further argue that the state has a duty to support the development of these capacities, and that a critical place for beginning this process is in public schools. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical pluralism recognizes the inevitability and legitimacy of multiple ethical perspectives and values, making it difficult to isolate the higher-order principles on which to base a theory of justice. Rising up to meet this challenge, Rainer Forst, a leading member of the Frankfurt School's newest generation of philosophers, conceives of an "autonomous" construction of justice founded on what he calls the basic moral right to justification. Forst begins by identifying this right from the perspective of moral philosophy. (...) Then, through an innovative, detailed critical analysis, he ties together the central components of social and political justice—freedom, democracy, equality, and toleration—and joins them to the right to justification. The resulting theory treats "justificatory power" as the central question of justice, and by adopting this approach, Forst argues, we can discursively work out, or "construct," principles of justice, especially with respect to transnational justice and human rights issues. As he builds his theory, Forst engages with the work of Anglo-American philosophers such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Amartya Sen, and critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, and Axel Honneth. Straddling multiple subjects, from politics and law to social protest and philosophical conceptions of practical reason, Forst brilliantly gathers contesting claims around a single, elastic theory of justice. (shrink)

The right to private property is among the most fundamental in liberal theory. For many liberals the idea of the state is grounded in its role as a protector of private property. If the liberal state is justified by its ability to protect property, the modern welfare state is often justified by its ability to meet needs. According to a view commonly referred to as “welfarism,” the very fact that needs exist implies there is a moral obligation to meet (...) them. In this Article I appeal to Rawlsian contractualist justification, including the “criterion of reciprocity,” in developing a third manner of thinking about the relationship between property and welfare. I argue that welfare rights are necessary conditions for justifying a role for the state in enforcing the “right to exclude,” a fundamental element of private ownership. My Article thus aims to use Rawls’ account of justification, outlined in his later works, to theorize the notion of property-owning democracy from Theory of Justice. (shrink)

The idea of “promoting democracy” is one that goes in and out of favor. With the advent of the so-called “Arab Spring”, the idea of promoting democracy abroad has come up for discussion once again. Yet an important recent line of thinking about human rights, starting with John Rawls’s book The Law of Peoples, has held that there is no human right to democracy, and that nondemocratic states that respect human rights should be “beyond reproach” in the realm of (...) international relations. This is, for obvious reasons, a controversial view, especially given the powerful and important arguments purporting to show that democracies do significantly better than nondemocracies in promoting internal peace and equality, and in engaging in peaceful international cooperation. Both proponents and opponents of the Rawlsian view of human rights have argued that the view implies that democracies may not “promote democracy” in nondemocratic societies. But, given that all parties to this dispute agree that democracy is necessary for justice, and given the important instrumental goods provided by democracy, the Rawlsian view has seemed deeply implausible to many. -/- In this paper I blunt this challenge to the Rawlsian view by showing how, even if there is no human right to democracy, we may still rightfully promote democracy in a number of ways and cases. Showing this requires investigation of what it means to “promote democracy”, and a more careful inspection of when various methods of promoting democracy are appropriate than has been done by most political theorists working on human rights. When we look carefully, we can see that in some instances acceptable forms of promoting democracy are compatible with the Rawlsian view of human rights, and that this view is therefore not vulnerable to the “instrumentalist” challenge. We also see how, if political philosophy is to be useful, it must be less abstract and look closely at actual cases. -/- This paper posted by permission of the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. For information visit the Stanford University website. (shrink)

For the purposes of this article, the right to confidentiality of communications between a lawyer and a client (legal professional privilege) is analysed and understood as a rule under which, in judicial or administrative proceedings, the content of communications between a lawyer and his client shall not be disclosed; if this rule is breached, the content of the communications in question is not treated as evidence in the process. Legal professional privilege is related to several articles of the Convention (...) for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The European Court of Human Rights has found that the violation of the right of an accused to communicate with a lawyer without a third party departs from Article 6(3)(c) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms which entitles to defend oneself in person or through a legal assistant. This kind of communication also relates to the Article 8 of the Convention, which provides a right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence. In the opinion of the European Court of Human Rights, according to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms there is no difference if a lawyer representing a client is a practitioner or not. However, when dealing with the violations of EU competition law, the Court of Justice of the European Union acknowledges the protection of legal professional privilege only with regard to the communications between an accused companies and an independent lawyer (who does not work for his client on an employment contract basis). When the protection of legal professional privilege is not granted for communications of the accused company with its own legal personnel, a question may arise whether it is considered that sufficient level of confidentiality is ensured for these companies. (shrink)