Human Rights as Moral Claim Rights

Are Human Rights Universal?

What's Wrong with Rights? ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198861973.003.0009 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 190-218

Author(s):

Nigel Biggar

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Specific Form ◽

Legal Rights ◽

Moral Claim ◽

Human Right ◽

International Human Rights ◽

International Consensus ◽

Natural Right ◽

International Human ◽

Moral Superiority

Broadly speaking, a human right is the same as a natural right, insofar as it is the property of anyone participating in human nature. However, ‘human rights’ usually refers to those bodies of rights that have attracted international recognition by states since 1945. Rights subscribed to by states possess a special authority that derives from national recognition, is confirmed by some international consensus, and is reinforced by international courts. This legal authority endows a natural, moral claim with the characteristic force of ‘a right’. From the early 1970s, international human rights have provoked the complaint from non-Western societies that they embody ‘neo-imperialist’ assumptions about the intellectual and moral superiority of Western culture. This chapter examines that complaint. It concludes that the human goods that rights seek to protect are universal, and it is therefore unlikely that any society has ever existed without establishing customary or legal rights that enjoy some security. Moreover, there is empirical evidence that some non-Western societies have in fact established rights, many of them familiar to Westerners. There are, however, different ways in which a good can be protected by a legal right, and the way chosen by a particular society will be shaped by its historical, cultural, and other circumstances. Therefore, while the good to be protected is universal, and while the means of protecting it by establishing a right is very probably universal, the specific form of the protective right will not be universal.

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Jeremy Bentham's ‘Nonsense upon Stilts’

Utilitas ◽

10.1017/s0953820800003745 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 1-26 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Philip Schofield

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Natural Rights ◽

Moral Claim ◽

Jeremy Bentham ◽

Definitive Form

Jeremy Bentham's ‘Nonsense upon Stilts’, hitherto known as ‘Anarchical Fallacies’, has recently appeared in definitive form in The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. The essay contains what is arguably the most influential critique of natural rights, and by extension human rights, ever written. Bentham's fundamental argument was that natural rights lacked any ontological basis, except to the extent that they reflected the personal desires of those propagating them. Moreover, by purporting to have a basis in nature, the language of natural rights gave a veneer of respectability to what, in the case of the French Revolutionaries at least, were at bottom violent and selfish passions. Yet that having been said, Bentham had no objection to the notion of a right which expressed a moral claim founded on the principle of utility. However, the phrase ‘securities against misrule’ better captured what was at stake, and avoided all the ambiguities otherwise associated with the word ‘right’.

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The Philosophical Basis for Human Rights Claims

India Quarterly A Journal of International Affairs ◽

10.1177/097492848904500204 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 45 (2-3) ◽

pp. 214-232

Author(s):

Christopher S. Nwodo

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Legal Status ◽

Legal Aspect ◽

Human Person ◽

Fundamental Aspect ◽

Moral Claim ◽

Human Beings ◽

Philosophical Basis ◽

Moral Claims ◽

National Constitution

In the majority of cases involving the protection of human rights, the general approach is to give human rights a legal status by incorporating them into some international charter or national constitution, thereby making them justiciable. This establishes two things simultaneously. It imposes certain obligations upon those wielding political power to protect and to promote human rights among their subjects; it also confers a legitimate claim upon those ruled to have their rights respected. There is more to a human rights claim however than the fact of its legal status. It is fundamentally a moral claim imposing a moral obligation. This additional consideration is not just a mere emphasis on the legal argument. It has a specific dimension of its own that most often involves a distinct category—the moral as opposed to the merely legal. The legal aspect as we have seen is established by the fact of these rights being incorporated into some international charter or national constitution. But legality does not always imply morality. For the legal to be at the same time moral, it has to satisfy some conditions that give it a moral status making it more binding a least in conscience. The other, more fundamental, aspect of the human rights issue which gives both the legal and the moral their grounding is the human element. A legitimate claim to certain rights is based on the concept of the human being as a “person”. Only persons have rights, right meaning a certain quality or property of relationship between persons, such that one demands certain things andinsists that he or shemust have them as a matter of legitimacy. From this point of view one cannot strictly speaking, talk about the rights of animals, except in so far as these animals belong to persons. In the same way, moral claims and obligations make sense only in the context of persons. The fundamental assumptions of our human rights arguments therefore rest ultimately on the fact that human beings are persons who by virtue of their very nature have legal and moral claims that are intrinsic to them. A great deal of effort is being made to assign legal grounds to sanctions in case of their infringement. The necessity for these sanctions derives from the fact that people can recognize the moral as well as the ontological basis for human rights and yet refuse to acknowledge, respect, protect or promote them. In this particular case, the sanction imposed by law takes effect. The ideal situation however should have been the recognition as well as the promotion of the legitimate claims of the human person not because of the fear of any sanctions, but because as a human person, he or she ought to be accorded those rights. This paper will therefore try to investigate the philosophical basis for the concept of the human person upon which are founded human rights claims.

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Two Types of Rights

Canadian Journal of Political Science ◽

10.1017/s0008423900004443 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 25 (4) ◽

pp. 661-676 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Paul Marshall

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

The Other ◽

Moral Claim ◽

Human Beings ◽

International Treaties ◽

Positive Law ◽

Positive Rights

AbstractThe expression “human rights” is used currently to denote two distinct items: one is a guarantee given in positive law; the other is a moral claim purportedly innate to human beings. These two items commonly are conflated, implying that they have a necessary connection. Historically they do not; positive human rights have been defended by those with no concept of innate rights, while believers in extensive innate rights have argued for limited positive rights. The defence of positive rights of the type now found in international treaties would be served by distinguishing it from justifications of the contention that human beings have rights.

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