The Limits of Human Rights

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Rich Spectrum ◽  
Fresh Insight

This volume engages openly and constructively with the question of what limits of human rights are, and what these limits mean. The contributions focus on conceptual questions of human rights, together providing an exceptionally rich spectrum of viewpoints and arguments across disciplines. The volume brings together a group of distinguished scholars from different disciplines who discuss diverse aspects of limits of human rights from various perspectives and in different topical settings, without engaging in a deconstruction or denial of human rights. Each contribution is supplemented by an engaging comment. The combination of perspectives makes this volume a distinct and unique contribution to the contemporary discussion on human rights. It provides fresh insight and much food for further thought for scholars, practitioners, students, and a wider public interested in law, politics, legal and political theory, philosophy, history, sociology, and anthropology, as they relate to human rights.

Reading Statelessness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyndsey Stonebridge
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
History Of

Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the failure of human rights to address statelessness is well known. Less commented upon is how important literature was to her thought. This chapter shows how Arendt’s 1940s essays on Kafka connect the history of the novel to shifting definitions of legal and political sovereignty. Arendt reads The Castle as a blueprint for a political theory that is also a theory of fiction: in the novel K, the unwanted stranger, demolishes the fiction of the rights of man, and with it, the fantasy of assimilation. In a parallel move, Kafka also refuses to assimilate his character into the conventions of fiction. Arendt’s reading changes the terms for how we might approach the literature of exile and of human rights.

Evolution of artificial intelligence and its impact on human rights: from sociolegal perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheshadri Chatterjee ◽  
Sreenivasulu N.S. ◽  
Zahid Hussain
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Government ◽  
Unique Study ◽  
Rights Issues

Purpose The applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in different sectors have become agendas for discussions in the highest circle of experts. The applications of AI can help society and can harm society even by jeopardizing human rights. The purpose of this study is to examine the evolution of AI and its impacts on human rights from social and legal perspectives. Design/methodology/approach With the help of studies of literature and different other AI and human rights-related reports, this study has taken an attempt to provide a comprehensive and executable framework to address these challenges contemplated to occur due to the increase in usage of different AI applications in the context of human rights. Findings This study finds out how different AI applications could help society and harm society. It also highlighted different legal issues and associated complexity arising due to the advancement of AI technology. Finally, the study also provided few recommendations to the governments, private enterprises and non-governmental organizations on the usage of different AI applications in their organizations. Research limitations/implications This study mostly deals with the legal, social and business-related issues arising due to the advancement of AI technology. The study does not penetrate the technological aspects and algorithms used in AI applications. Policymakers, government agencies and private entities, as well as practitioners could take the help of the recommendations provided in this study to formulate appropriate regulations to control the usage of AI technology and its applications. Originality/value This study provides a comprehensive view of the emergence of AI technology and its implication on human rights. There are only a few studies that examine AI and related human rights issues from social, legal and business perspectives. Thus, this study is claimed to be a unique study. Also, this study provides valuable inputs to the government agencies, policymakers and practitioners about the need to formulate a comprehensive regulation to control the usage of AI technology which is also another unique contribution of this study.

Real-World Global Egalitarianism

2018 ◽  
pp. 117-129
Author(s):  
Darrel Moellendorf
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Real World ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
Egalitarian Justice

This chapter notes that normative International Political Theory (IPT) developed over the past several decades in response to political, social, and economic events. These included the globalization of trade and finance, the increasing credibility of human-rights norms in foreign policy, and a growing awareness of a global ecological crisis. The emergence of normative IPT was not simply an effort to understand these events, but an attempt to offer accounts of what the responses to them should be. Normative IPT, then, was originally doubly responsive to the real world. Additionally, this chapter argues that there is a plausible account of global egalitarianism, which takes the justification of principles of egalitarian justice to depend crucially on features of the social and economic world. The account of global egalitarianism applies to the current circumstances in part because of features of those circumstances.

Konflikt als Movens – Chancen für Schule, Religion und Demokratie

2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-141
Author(s):  
Sebastian Engelmann
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Rights Education ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Educational Thought ◽  
Normative Foundation

AbstractIn times of antidemocratic resentment and rising societal diversity, harmony and unity become questionable as the normative foundation for modern approaches to education. This article makes plausible the assertion that educational thought needs to change one of its basic theoretical assump- tions: the overall perception of conflicts. In a first step, the article introduces the concept of the “School Republic”, summarizing the ideas of Hermann Lietz and then its advancements by Minna Specht. In a second step, the article ties this specific pedagogical arrangement to recent political theory and one well-known concept of human rights education. Finally, the article discusses the scope of the approach which is sketched out here and identifies links to recent discussions in democraticcy education.

Minority Rights, Multiculturalism and the Roma of Europe

2007 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Barth
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
European Convention ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Normative Claim ◽  
Roma Population

AbstractIn this article, I review legal initiativaes to improve conditions for the Roma peoples who live in the states of Europe. The question is timely given the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007. Romania contains the largest concentration of the Roma population in Europe. My article uncovers a schism between political theory and international law on the question of minority rights. I distinguish how the conclusions of Will Kymlicka, one of the most prolific writers on the subject of multiculturalism in political theory, differ from the international jurisprudence that protects minority groups. In this essay, I analyse Kymlicka's claim that multicultural policies are contextually dependent, and an inappropriate subject for a common legal regime of international human rights treaties. To determine the implications of human rights jurisprudence for this normative claim, I also research court cases filed by the Roma under the European Framework Convention for the Protection of Minorities and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. I contrast the international treaties that protect minority groups from political theorist accounts of multiculturalism in three areas. First, my article discusses jurisdictional issues concerning whether the particular groups defined by minority rights, irrespective of their geographical location or contextual experience, are proper subjects for protection by a common rights regime. Next, I illustrate how cultural rights are distinguishable from traditional civil rights laws. Finally, I examine how the historic persecution of the Roma violates human rights standards that protect minorities. The Roma have a long and unique relationship with the European states, which serves to demonstrate whether or not a common regime of minority rights safeguards the cultural development of the Roma.

scholarly journals Neo-Kantian Cosmopolitanism and International Law: Modest Practicality?

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 605-629
Author(s):  
Peter Sutch
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Practical Approach ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Political Theory

AbstractThis article explores the practical approach to global justice advocated by the cosmopolitan political theorists Pogge, Beitz and Buchanan. Using a comparative exposition it outlines their reliance on international law and on human rights law in particular. The essay explores the neo-Kantian influence on the practical approach and offers an original critique of this trend in contemporary international political theory.

InProfile

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (04) ◽  
pp. 908
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Special Interests ◽  
History And Literature

Professor Isis Leslie is an interdisciplinary scholar who draws on film studies, history, and literature to examine questions of social justice. Some of her special interests include globalization, the intersections of racial politics and political theory, comparative political thought, human rights—their definition and abuses, and the relationships between psychoanalysis and politics.

Statelessness, sentimentality and human rights

2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (9) ◽  
pp. 1011-1024 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Staples
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Final Analysis ◽  
Political Practice

This article considers the ongoing difficulties for mainstream political theory of actualizing human rights, with particular reference to Rorty’s attempt to transcend their liberal foundations. It argues that there is a problematic disjuncture between his articulation of exclusion and his hope for inclusion via the expansion of the liberal human rights culture. More specifically, it shows that Rorty’s description of victimhood is based on premises unavailable to him, with the consequence that stateless persons are rendered inhuman, and, further, that his accounts of sentimentality and solidarity have limited potential for the inclusion of such victims within the liberal ‘community of justification’. In the final analysis, the article argues that there is a substantial mismatch between Rorty’s dependence on both liberal norms and international political practice, and his hopes for the human rights culture to include those stripped of human dignity.

Comment on Gibbard Utilitarianism Versus Human Rights

1984 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-107
Author(s):  
James Fishkin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Separateness Of Persons

Rather than respond to Gibbard, point by point, I will comment on what I take to be the general spirit of his argument. The old consensus on some form or another of utilitarianism, a consensus that dominated discussions in moral and political theory only a few years ago, has now largely evaporated before the heat of distributional objections founded on justice, the “separateness of persons,” and other concerns for the severe sacrifices that utilitarianism might require of some for the sake of greater gains to others (or for the sake of gains to a greater number of others).

scholarly journals Realism, Utopianism and Human Rights

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 542-552
Author(s):  
Paul Raekstad
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Recent Article

In a recent article, Benjamin McKean defends utopian political theorising by means of an internal critique of realism, construed as essentially anti-utopian, in order to defend human rights against realist objections thereto. I challenge that argument in three steps, focusing on the realism of Raymond Geuss. First, I show that the realism of Raymond Geuss is not incompatible with utopianism, that Geuss never opposes realism to utopianism and that he frequently argues that political theory should be both more realistic and more utopian. Second, I show that McKean misconstrues Geuss’ opposition to human rights as anti-utopian. Neither Geuss’ opposition to ethics-first political theory nor his objections to human rights can accurately be explicated in terms of McKean’s ‘utopianism’. Finally, I show how this misconstruing of Geuss’ realism renders McKean’s critique of Geuss ineffective, as a result of which his defence of human rights against Geuss’ realist objections fails. I conclude with some reflections on the importance of this for methodological debates in political theory, the value of realistically utopian theorising and the ideological power of contemporary ethics-first approaches to political theory.

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