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On Human Rights

Author: James Griffin

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2009-08-27

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0191623415

What is a human right? How can we tell whether a proposed human right really is one? How do we establish the content of particular human rights, and how do we resolve conflicts between them? These are pressing questions for philosophers, political theorists, jurisprudents, international lawyers, and activists. James Griffin offers answers in his compelling new investigation of the foundations of human rights. First, On Human Rights traces the idea of a natural right from its origin in the late Middle Ages, when the rights were seen as deriving from natural laws, through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the original theological background was progressively dropped and 'natural law' emptied of most of its original meaning. By the end of the Enlightenment, the term 'human rights' (droits de l'homme) appeared, marking the purge of the theological background. But the Enlightenment, in putting nothing in its place, left us with an unsatisfactory, incomplete idea of a human right. Griffin shows how the language of human rights has become debased. There are scarcely any accepted criteria, either in the academic or the public sphere, for correct use of the term. He takes on the task of showing the way towards a determinate concept of human rights, based on their relation to the human status that we all share. He works from certain paradigm cases, such as freedom of expression and freedom of worship, to more disputed cases such as welfare rights - for instance the idea of a human right to health. His goal is a substantive account of human rights - an account with enough content to tell us whether proposed rights really are rights. Griffin emphasizes the practical as well as theoretical urgency of this goal: as the United Nations recognized in 1948 with its Universal Declaration, the idea of human rights has considerable power to improve the lot of humanity around the world. We can't do without the idea of human rights, and we need to get clear about it. 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.

Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry

Author: Michael Ignatieff

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-12-28

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1400842840

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Michael Ignatieff draws on his extensive experience as a writer and commentator on world affairs to present a penetrating account of the successes, failures, and prospects of the human rights revolution. Since the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, this revolution has brought the world moral progress and broken the nation-state's monopoly on the conduct of international affairs. But it has also faced challenges. Ignatieff argues that human rights activists have rightly drawn criticism from Asia, the Islamic world, and within the West itself for being overambitious and unwilling to accept limits. It is now time, he writes, for activists to embrace a more modest agenda and to reestablish the balance between the rights of states and the rights of citizens. Ignatieff begins by examining the politics of human rights, assessing when it is appropriate to use the fact of human rights abuse to justify intervention in other countries. He then explores the ideas that underpin human rights, warning that human rights must not become an idolatry. In the spirit of Isaiah Berlin, he argues that human rights can command universal assent only if they are designed to protect and enhance the capacity of individuals to lead the lives they wish. By embracing this approach and recognizing that state sovereignty is the best guarantee against chaos, Ignatieff concludes, Western nations will have a better chance of extending the real progress of the past fifty years. Throughout, Ignatieff balances idealism with a sure sense of practical reality earned from his years of travel in zones of war and political turmoil around the globe. Based on the Tanner Lectures that Ignatieff delivered at Princeton University's Center for Human Values in 2000, the book includes two chapters by Ignatieff, an introduction by Amy Gutmann, comments by four leading scholars--K. Anthony Appiah, David A. Hollinger, Thomas W. Laqueur, and Diane F. Orentlicher--and a response by Ignatieff.

Rights from Wrongs

Author: Alan M. Dershowitz

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9780465017133

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A noted legal scholar examines the source of human rights, arguing that rights are the result of particular experiences with injustice and looking at the implications in terms of the right to privacy, voting rights, and other rights.

The Logic of Liberal Rights

Author: Eric Heinze

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-02-24

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 113441983X

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The Logic of Liberal Rights uses basic logic to develop a model of argument presupposed in all disputes about civil rights and liberties. No prior training in logic is required, as each step is explained. This analysis does not merely apply general logic to legal arguments but is also specifically tailored to the issues of civil rights and liberties. It shows that all arguments about civil rights and liberties presuppose one fixed structure and that there can be no original argument in rights disputes, except within the confines of that structure. Concepts arising in disputes about rights, like 'liberal' or 'democratic', are not mere abstractions but have a fixed and precise character. This book integrates themes in legal theory, political science and moral philosophy, as well as the philosophy of logic and language. For the advanced scholar, the book provides a model presupposed by leading theoretical schools (liberal and critical, positivist and naturalist). For the student it provides a systematic theory of civil rights and liberties. Examples are drawn from the European Convention in Human Rights but no special knowledge of the Convention is assumed, as the issues analysed arise throughout the world. Such issues include problems of free speech, religious freedom, privacy, torture, unlawful detention and private property.

Human Dignity and Human Rights

Author: Pablo Gilabert

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2019-01-22

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 0198827229

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Human dignity: social movements invoke it, several national constitutions enshrine it, and it features prominently in international human rights documents. But what is human dignity, why is it important, and what is its relationship to human rights? This book offers a sophisticated and comprehensive defence of the view that human dignity is the moral heart of human rights. First, it clarifies the network of concepts associated with dignity. Paramount within this network is a core notion of human dignity as an inherent, non-instrumental, egalitarian, and high-priority normative status of human persons. People have this status in virtue of their valuable human capacities rather than as a result of their national origin and other conventional features. Second, it shows how human dignity gives rise to an inspiring ideal of solidaristic empowerment, which calls us to support people's pursuit of a flourishing life by affirming both negative duties not to block or destroy, and positive duties to protect and facilitate, the development and exercise of the valuable capacities at the basis of their dignity. The most urgent of these duties are correlative to human rights. Third, this book illustrates how the proposed dignitarian approach allows us to articulate the content, justification, and feasible implementation of specific human rights, including contested ones, such as the rights to democratic political participation and to decent labour conditions. Finally, this book's dignitarian approach helps illuminate the arc of humanist justice, identifying both the difference and the continuity between the basic requirements of human rights and more expansive requirements of social justice such as those defended by liberal egalitarians and democratic socialists. Human dignity is indeed the moral heart of human rights. Understanding it enables us to defend human rights as the urgent ethical and political project that puts humanity first.

The Logic of Equality

Author: Eric Heinze

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-08

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 1351770144

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This title was first published in 2003. The Logic of Equality proposes a formal-logical method for examining the indeterminacy of legal discourse, using the example of the non-discrimination norm. It shows that the indeterminacy of a legal concept does not mean that it is completely chaotic - the indeterminacy of the non-discrimination norm arises out of, and presupposes, a determinate formal structure, which remains fixed and constant both within and across jurisdictions, regardless of institutional or doctrinal differences. To illustrate the argument, cases are presented from a variety of jurisdictions including the United States Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Justice, and the German Constitutional Court. The book is aimed at theorists who are interested in the analysis of legal discourse, including comparative legal scholars and those who specialise in human rights and/or discrimination law.

Thomas Paine and the Idea of Human Rights

Author: Robert Lamb

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-05-28

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1107106524

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An introduction to and analytical reconstruction of Thomas Paine's political philosophy and his account of human rights.

The Idea of Human Rights

Author: Charles R. Beitz

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-07-28

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 0199604371

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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.

Philosophical Theory and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Author: William Sweet

Publisher: University of Ottawa Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 0776605585

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Philosophical Theory and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights examines the relations and interrelations among theoretical and practical analyses of human rights. Edited by William Sweet, this volume draws on the works of philosophers, political theorists and those involved in the implementation of human rights. The essays, although diverse in method and approach, collectively argue that the language of rights and corresponding legal and political instruments have an important place in contemporary social political philosophy. Published in English.

Human Rights and Memory

Author: Daniel Levy

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 0271037385

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"Examines the foundations of human rights, how their political and cultural validation in a global context is posing challenges to nation-state sovereignty, and how they become an integral part of international relations and are institutionalized into domestic legal and political practices"--Provided by publisher.