Encryption Wars

Author(s):  
Amitai Etzioni

All societies face a constant tug of war between protecting individual rights and ensuring the needs of various common goods, especially public safety and homeland security. At any point in time, one side or the other may gain too much power and must be scaled back. The chapter examines this issue by dealing with encryption, drawing on the lessons of the Crypto Wars of the 1990s and the legal case between Apple and the FBI in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack in 2016. Beyond specifics, the chapter deals with a new, liberal communitarian approach, to sorting out where the balance lies between individual rights and the common good.

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Felder

Accounts of inclusive education that locate the concept of inclusion within theories of individual rights face two problems. The first problem, called ‘the dilemma of identity’, assumes that on one hand we need communities to develop and ensure a sense of identity and a feeling of social inclusion, whereas on the other hand, inclusion is only partly ensured via such forms of inclusion. Inclusion necessarily entails participation in societal goods such as education. The second issue is that those rights accounts do not take seriously the distinctive social nature of inclusion. In this article, I suggest a basic distinction between communal and societal inclusion that serves as a background for a fundamental suggestion: to conceptualise rights to inclusive education as part of an account of inclusion as a common good.


1910 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 131-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Alfred Faulkner

There are two facts to be borne in mind in regard to Luther's whole attitude to social and economic questions. The first is that ordinarily this was a territory to be confined to experts, in which ministers should not meddle. He believed that a special knowledge was necessary to deal with some of these matters, and that they had better be left to those to whom Providence had assigned them, whether the jurists, those clever in worldly knowledge, or the authorities. The other fact is that the Church after all has social duties, and that Church and clergy must fight flagrant abuses and try to bring in the Kingdom of God on earth. The Church must use the Word of God against sin and sinners, and so by spiritual ministries help the needs of the time. The authorities on their part shall proceed by strict justice against evil doers. But there is another fact here which it is necessary to mention to get Luther's whole attitude, viz., that the State's function is not simply to administer justice, but to secure the general weal. They shall do the very best they can for their subjects, says Luther. “The authorities shall serve their subjects and use their office not petulantly [nicht zu Mutwillen] but for the advancement of the common good, and especially for the poor.” The princes shall give laws which shall limit as far as possible social misery and national dangers. They should listen to the proposals of the Church to this end, and on the ground of wise counsels of churchmen, do away with old laws and make new ones.


Author(s):  
Beth J. Singer

This chapter explores the debate between liberalism and communitarianism. It shows that placing a high value on individuals and their rights does not entail sacrificing the common good or the good of the community. To begin with, both personal identity and individual rights are inseparably linked to membership in communities. Individuality and community are mutually constitutive, and the generation of social norms by persons in community with one another is the precondition and the source of all the rights that are actually operative in society. Furthermore, being reciprocal—consisting in mutually recognized entitlements and obligations to respect them—rights are not adversarial. They do not divide people from one another, nor do they set them against governments or states. At least in principle, then, individual and community rights are compatible.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 404-420
Author(s):  
Remigiusz Rosicki

The objective scope of the analysis encompasses special measures used in the fight against terrorism in the context of ethical and constitutional principles attributed to a democratic state ruled by law and a liberal democracy. A practical example of a special measure used in the fight against terrorism, and presented in the text, is furnished by the content of one of the articles in the Polish Aviation Law, which was found unconstitutional in 2008. The content of this article made it possible for an administrative authority to make a decision with regard to consenting to the destruction of a civil aircraft, if it was used as a means of terrorist attack. The main purpose of the paper is to consider the acceptable scope of radical measures in the fight against terrorism, while taking into account the reinterpretation of priorities in the hierarchy of legal principles. In order to elaborate the objective scope of the analysis, the following research question is phrased: To what extent is it possible to sacrifice the well-being of the individual (dignity, rights and freedoms) for the sake of the common good (security)? The adopted analysis methodology is based on a thought experiment consisting in the reinterpretation of ethical principles and the values of the constitutional norms in a democratic state ruled by law and a liberal democracy. With the benefit of essentialist reduction, it is posited that the two competing constitutional principles are the principle of dignity and the principle of the common good; they can be reduced to, for instance, protection of the life of an individual or of members of the community as a whole. Abstrakt Zakres przedmiotowy analizy obejmuje zagadnienie szczególnych środków walki z terroryzmem w kontekście zasad etycznych i konstytucyjnych przypisanych demokratycznemu państwu prawa i demokracji liberalnej. Przykładem praktycznym szczególnego środka walki z terroryzmem zaprezentowanym w tekście jest treść jednego z artykułów polskiego Prawa lotniczego, który został uznany za niekonstytucyjny w 2008 roku. Treść artykułu dawała możliwość podjęcia decyzji przez organ administracji publicznej w zakresie wyrażenia zgody zniszczenia cywilnego statku powietrznego w sytuacji, gdy ten użyty jest jako środek ataku terrorystycznego. Głównym celem pracy jest rozważanie zakresu dopuszczalności stosowania radykalnych środków walki z terroryzmem przy uwzględnieniu reinterpretacji priorytetów w hierarchii zasad prawnych. W celu uszczegółowienia zakresu przedmiotowego analizy zaprezentowano następujące pytanie badawcze: W jakim zakresie możliwe jest poświęcenie dobra jednostki (godności, praw i wolności) na rzecz dobra wspólnego (bezpieczeństwa)? Metoda analizy opiera się na eksperymencie myślowym polegającym na reinterpretacji zasad etycznych i wartości norm konstytucyjnych w demokratycznym państwie prawa i demokracji liberalnej. Przyjęto za pomocą redukcji esencjonalnej, że dwie rywalizujące ze sobą zasady konstytucyjne, to zasada godności i zasada dobra wspólnego, które mogą być sprowadzone np. do ochrony życia jednostki lub członków wspólnoty jako całości.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (49) ◽  
pp. 46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amitai Etzioni

Liberal communitarianism holds that a good society is based on a carefully crafted balance between individual rights and the common good; that both normative elements have the same fundamental standing and neither a priori trumps the other. Societies can lose the good balance either by becoming excessively committed to the common good (e.g. national security) or to individual rights (e.g. privacy). Even societies that have established a careful balance often need to recalibrate it following changes in historical conditions (such as the 2001 attacks on the American homeland) and technological developments (such as the invention of smart cell phones).


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