Modern Islamic Conceptions of Sovereignty in Comparative Perspective

2019 ◽  
pp. 545-564
Author(s):  
Andrew F. March
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Legitimacy Crisis ◽  
Political Realm

The ambiguities and conflicts internal to modern Islamic debates about sovereignty are not simply important for understanding the nature of the legitimacy crisis experienced by many modern Muslim majority polities (a crisis that has been hardly resolved by the recent suppression of Islamist electoral politics). They are at the center of a common set of ethical and political questions; for example, what does it mean to assert that there is a law that precedes and constrains political action (whether natural law, human rights law, or sharīʿa law) when the meaning of that prepolitical law must be adjudicated or asserted within the political realm; what are the limits of the legitimate authority of a self-governing people to fundamentally reconstitute its form of governance; and how can lawmaking or sovereign adjudication be seen as grounded in popular will formation?

When Peace Kills Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharath Srinivasan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Original Contribution ◽  
Close Range ◽  
Civil Politics ◽  
Political Realm

When Peace Kills Politics explains the role of international peacemaking in reproducing violence and political authoritarianism in Sudan and South Sudan in recent decades. Srinivasan explains how Sudan’s landmark north–south peace process that achieved the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement fueled war in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile alongside how it contributed to Sudan’s failed political transformation and newly independent South Sudan’s rapid descent into civil war. Concluding with the conspicuous absence of ‘peace’ when non-violent revolutionary political change came to Sudan in 2019, Srinivasan examines at close range why outsiders’ peace projects may displace civil politics and raise the political currency of violence. With an original contribution to theorizing peace and peacemaking drawing upon the political thought of Hannah Arendt, the book is an analysis of the tragic shortcomings of attempting to build a non-violent political realm through neat designs and tools of compulsion, where the end goal of peace becomes caught up in idealized constitutional texts, technocratic templates and deals on sharing spoils. When Peace Kills Politics demands a radical rethinking of the project of peace in civil wars, grounded in a more earnest commitment to civil political action.

“Bridges of Reconciliation”

2019 ◽  
pp. 96-127
Author(s):  
Petra Goedde
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Internal State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Universal Code ◽  
Peace Activism ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Politically Active ◽  
Political Realm

A host of religious individuals and groups became politically active on behalf of world peace at the height of the Cold War. Those groups tried to add a religious dimension to the debates about Cold War international relations, while at the same time pushing the religious conceptualization of peace into the political realm. The Cold War turned religious groups and individuals into political activists. These activists still promulgated peace as an internal state of spiritual harmony, common to many of the world’s largest religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism. But they added a new dimension that stressed its communal, political, and global aspirations. They merged the ideals of peace activism and ecumenism in the postwar world by relying on the universal code enshrined in the global human rights agenda, doing so a decade before the secular human rights revolution erupted in the 1970s.

The Policing Board

2021 ◽  
pp. 98-130
Author(s):  
Richard Martin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Statutory Duty

The Policing Board sits at the heart of the intersection between human rights law and politics. As a corporate body, the Policing Board has a statutory duty to monitor police compliance with the HRA. This chapter argues that regardless of the Policing Board’s statutory duty to monitor policing based on the standards of the HRA, for the political members on the Policing Board, human rights are a vessel harbouring deep sentiments and concerns at the heart of which are competing histories of the conflict, legacies of policing and understandings of Northern Ireland’s imperfect peace. These narratives swirl around, and at times directly contradict, the official police voice, further demonstrating the elasticity of human rights to stretch to fit the visions of different actors. The examination of alternative official narratives by political parties in Northern Ireland is developed across three sections, inspired by the dimensions of the ‘political life’ of human rights set out in Chapter 1. These three dimensions are: the role historical context plays in structuring the ambit and style of human rights contestation involving social actors; human rights as an articulation of a much wider array of interests, fears and aspirations that find expression through rights narratives; and how human rights can be used by groups to actively construct claims with the hope of achieving legal gains in specific fields

In What Sense are Human Rights Political? A Preliminary Exploration

2011 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Valentini
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
Philosophical Discussion ◽  
Valuable Alternative ◽  
Political View ◽  
Feasibility Constraints

Philosophical discussion of human rights has long been monopolised by what might be called the ‘natural-law view’. On this view, human rights are fundamental moral rights which people enjoy solely by virtue of their humanity. In recent years, a number of theorists have started to question the validity of this outlook, advocating instead what they call a ‘political’ view. My aim in this article is to explore the latter view in order to establish whether it constitutes a valuable alternative to the ‘natural-law view’. In particular, I distinguish between three ways in which human rights can be political: in relation to their (1) iudicandum, (2) justification and (3) feasibility constraints. I argue that it makes sense to think of human rights as political in relation to both their iudicandum and their justification but in a way that is not always adequately captured by proponents of the political view. Moreover, I also claim that, if we take the political view seriously, we still need to engage in the sort of abstract moral reasoning that characterises the natural-law approach and which proponents of the political view significantly downplay.

scholarly journals Jusnaturalism as the foundation of the concept of international protection of human rights in H. Lauterpacht’s works

2021 ◽  
pp. 392-396
Author(s):  
O. M. Sheredʹko
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
International Human ◽  
International Document

Prominent international law scholar H. Lauterpacht devoted most of his exploratory work to the issue of human rights in international law.This article reveals H. Lauterpacht’s views on the role of international law in the recognition and consolidation of human rights and the role of jusnaturalism as the basis of international human rights law. Analyzing the works by H. Lauterpacht, we can say that the scholar was the founder of international human rights law. Natural law and natural human rights, according to H. Lauterpacht, have been the unchanging basis of human rights of all times.The origins and periodization of jusnaturalism in the works of leading international law scholar are considered. The main statements of the representatives of the natural law concept of different times, in particular, the basic ideas in the works of Socrates, Aulis Aarnio, Francisco de Vitoria, Francisco Suarez, Alberico Gentili, Thomas Hobbes, Samuel von Pufendorf, Hugo Grotius are outlined.The views of prominent philosophers are the foundation of the concept of jusnaturalism.  Numerous supporters of the concept of natural law in different periods of history testify to its importance at every stage of human rights development.International law in this matter is a kind of second stage of recognition and protection of human rights, after recognition in the national law of states.International law is designed to consolidate the rights granted by nature to the human in the international arena.H. Lauterpacht saw the real recognition and protection of human rights by enshrining them in an international document signed by all countries of the world.The scientist proposed a draft international document on the recognition of human rights at the international level called International Bill of the Rights of Man. The provisions proposed in this document were later enshrined in international instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966.

Hate-speech laws: consistency with national and international human rights law

Legal Studies ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic McGoldrick ◽  
Thérèse O'Donnell
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
International Human

Racism has climbed the political agenda at national, European and international levels. Reports from national and international non-governmental organisations (NGO’s) and inter-governmental organisations have focused considerable attention on racism and xenophobia and document an increase in racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and race-related activities. As racism has climbed the political agendas, so there has been a substantial increase in the number of national, European and international legal instruments devoted to it. In particular, race-related restrictions on freedom of expression (‘hate-speech’) are increasing and seem likely to continue to do so. Such restrictions give rise to controversy in terms of constitutionality, legal policy and consistency with European and international human rights law. There are also differences of views between the policies of NGO's on restrictions on racist speech.

Universal Rights versus Sharia? Reflections on the Moral and Legal Dimensions of Human Rights Law and Sharia

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-161
Author(s):  
Elena Namli
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
The Social ◽  
Liberal Ideology ◽  
International Human ◽  
Effective Development

Abstract This article develops a critique of the monopoly of liberal ideology in the field of human rights by considering how law, morality and politics are related to each other. The author argues that the constructive potential of international human rights law does not lie in its being understood and practiced as a positive law. On the contrary, to focus on human rights law as positive law is to conceal the political nature of human rights and to prevent effective development of its moral and political potential. Further, the author considers the case of Sharia law and argues that Sharia, for it to be implemented concretely in the social, political, and legal spheres, must be understood as a moral and religious ‘way’. These interpretations of human rights law and Sharia are used as the basis for a critique of the idea that human rights law and Sharia contradict each other.

scholarly journals “A Conviction about What is Moral or Lawful” Carl Schmitt on humanitarianism, the humanum, and the possibility of a “universal jus commune”

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. e40279
Author(s):  
Nicholas Hiromura
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Moral Conflict ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Definition Of

Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) spent much of his life arguing against human rights. While this may not come as a surprise, a closer examination of The Concept of the Political reveals that Schmitt’s critique of Liberal humanitarianism is itself rooted in a concept of the humanum as a sphere of substantive moral and political conflict. As an analysis of Schmitt’s concept of the enemy shows, this humanum serves as an argument for the necessity of a juristic distinction between enemy and foe. For, only by distinguishing between the relativized enemy and the absolute foe, Schmitt argues, will we be able to distinguish create a space for particularly political action. Having revealed the framework of mediated moral conflict, in which Schmitt conceives of political action, I then turn to consider Schmitt’s minimalist proposal for a positive definition of a “universal jus commune” and assess its significance for a discussion of human rights.

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