Rights

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Pennington
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Group Rights ◽  
Constitutional Jurisprudence ◽  
Theological Thought

One of the most notable characteristics of Western societies has been the development of individual and group rights in legal, theological, and philosophical thought of the first two millennia. It has often been noted that thinkers in Non-Western societies have not had the same preoccupation with rights. The very concept of rights is laden with numerous problems. Universality is the most basic and difficult. If human rights are only a product of Western ideas of justice, they cannot have universality. In an age that is dominated by conceptions of law embracing some form of legal positivism, many scholars recognize only individual rights that have been established by the constitutional jurisprudence of individual countries or their legal systems. Historically, the emergence of rights in European jurisprudence is intimately connected with the terms ius naturale and lex naturalis in Western jurisprudence and theological thought. Human beings may never agree on universal rules of a natural law, but they might agree on universal precepts that shape the penumbra of rights surrounding natural rights.

Riccardo Saccenti, Debating Medieval Natural Law: A Survey. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016, XIII, pp. 155.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 318-320
Author(s):  
Scott L. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Great Chain Of Being ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Concepts ◽  
Hans Kelsen ◽  
University Of Notre Dame ◽  
Conceptual Shift

Saccenti’s volume belongs to the category of Begriffsgeschichte, the history of concepts, and more particularly to the debate over the existence or nonexistence of a conceptual shift in ius naturale to encompass a subjective notion of natural rights. The author argues that this issue became particularly relevant in mid-twentieth century, first, because of the desire to delimit the totalitarian implications of legal positivism chez Hans Kelsen; second, in response to Lovejoy’s The Great Chain of Being and its progeny; and third, as a result of a revival of neo-Thomistic and neo-scholastic perspectives sometimes labelled “une nouvelle chrétienté.”

On the Artifactual—and Natural— Character of Legal Institutions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corrado Roversi
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Legal Realism ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
The Law ◽  
Theory Of Law

Are legal institutions artifacts? If artifacts are conceived as entities whose existence depends on human beings, then yes, legal institutions are, of course, artifacts. But an artifact theory of law makes a stronger claim, namely, that there is actually an explanatory gain to be had by investigating legal institutions as artifacts, or through the features of ordinary artifacts. This is the proposition explored in this chapter: that while this understanding of legal institutions makes it possible to find common ground between legal positivism and legal realism, it does not capture all of the insights offered by these two traditions. An artifact theory of law can therefore be necessary in explaining the law, but it will not suffice to that end. This chapter also posits that legal artifacts bear a relevant connection to certain conceptions of nature, thus vindicating one of the original insights behind natural law theory.

scholarly journals God, New Natural Law Theory, and Human Rights

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 613
Author(s):  
Christopher Tollefsen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Full Theory ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Epistemological Dimension

Critics of the “New” Natural Law (NNL) theory have raised questions about the role of the divine in that theory. This paper considers that role in regard to its account of human rights: can the NNL account of human rights be sustained without a more or less explicit advertence to “the question of God’s existence or nature or will”? It might seem that Finnis’s “elaborate sketch” includes a full theory of human rights even prior to the introduction of his reflections on the divine in the concluding chapter of Natural Law and Natural Rights. But in this essay, I argue that an adequate account of human rights cannot, in fact, be sustained without some role for God’s creative activity in two dimensions, the ontological and the motivational. These dimensions must be distinguished from the epistemological dimension of human rights, that is, the question of whether epistemological access to truths about human rights is possible without reference to God’s existence, nature, or will. The NNL view is that such access is possible. However, I will argue, the epistemological cannot be entirely cabined off from the relevant ontological and motivational issues and the NNL framework can accommodate this fact without difficulty.

Natural Law

2019 ◽  
pp. 174-203
Author(s):  
Lenn E. Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Naturalistic Fallacy ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Theology And Science ◽  
Great Tradition

Natural law links moral and legal theory with natural theology and science. It is critical to thinking about God’s sovereignty and human freedom. Tracing the roots of the natural law idea, I defend the approach against conventionalism and legal positivism. For they leave human norms ungrounded. Chapter 7 opens by disarming Hume’s elenchus about ‘is’ and ‘ought’. I do not deny the reality of a naturalistic fallacy, but I do argue that facts make rightful claims on us and that the unity of reality and value central to Jewish thinking and to the philosophical great tradition does not confuse facts with values but does appreciate the preciousness of being—of life and personhood most pointedly. Once again here transcendence consorts with immanence. For we find God’s law writ subtly in nature, not least when we discover what it means to perfect ourselves as loving and creative human beings.

Human rights

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Jones
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
General Idea ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Special Position ◽  
Domestic Law ◽  
In Virtue Of

Human rights are rights ascribed to human beings simply as human beings. While people may possess some rights only if they occupy a special position or role, such as citizen, doctor or promisee, the claim of human rights theory is that there are other rights that everyone possesses merely in virtue of being human. Historically, the idea of human rights is closely associated with that of natural rights and both of these sorts of right have been conceived, in the first instance, as moral rights. However, since the United Nations promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, human rights have been elaborated and provided for in a host of international declarations and conventions and in the domestic law of many states, so that human rights now frequently have a legal or quasi-legal status. The general idea of human rights has been very widely accepted, but there is disagreement over which rights are human rights, over how these rights should be justified, and over their absolute or defeasible status. The difficulty of combining the universality of human rights with respect for cultural difference is also a major preoccupation of both proponents and critics of human rights.

US human rights panel will have widespread impact

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
The Body ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Lgbt Issues

Significance Pompeo launched the commission on July 8, charging it with providing “fresh thinking” on human rights where concepts of rights have “departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights”. However, the body’s precise activities are left vague. The commission is also widely interpreted as an effort to infuse the current framework for human rights in US foreign policy with more conservative social values. Impacts The commission could be a flashpoint in budget negotiations down to September/October and beyond. The body will likely reinterpret rights more conservatively, including on abortion and LGBT issues, and elevate religious liberty. The pro-Israel lobby will welcome the commission, partly as the UN has been criticised as being ‘anti-Israel’.

Legality Without The Rule of Law? Scott Shapiro on Wicked Legal Systems

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-200
Author(s):  
David Dyzenhaus
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Moral Quality ◽  
Legal Positivist

InLegality,Scott Shapiro – a leading legal positivist – analyses the problem of a wicked legal system in a way that brings him close to natural law positions. For he argues that a wicked legal system is botched as a legal system and I show that such an argument entails a prior argument that there is some set of standards or criteria internal to law which are both moral and legal. As a result, the more successful a legal order is legally speaking, the better the moral quality of its law, and the more it is a failure morally speaking, the worse the legal quality of its law. It is such moral features of law that Shapiro concedes make it plausible to account for law’s claim to justified authority over its subjects. However, Shapiro cannot, as a legal positivist, accept this entailment. His book thus brings to the surface and illuminates a central dilemma for legal positivism. If legal positivists wish to account for the authority of law they have to abandon legal positivism’s denial that law has such moral features. If they do not, they should revive a form of legal positivism that specifically abjures any claim to account for law’s normative nature.

scholarly journals IN RELATION TO CONCEPT OF COLLECTIVE HUMAN RIGHTS

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 46-52
Author(s):  
D.A. Gadzhieva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Group Rights ◽  
Collective Rights ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Legal Entities

This article is devoted to the analysis of some of the issues related to the definition of the content of the concept of collective human rights. The author examines the issues related to the definition of methods of exercising and the range of subjects of collective rights, some problems concerning their relations with individual rights, as well as whether the term “collective rights of the individual” is a proper one to be used in law science. The author analyzes the difference between the concepts of “collective” and group” rights, and also substantiates the reasons why these categories of human rights cannot be equated or why group rights cannot be singled out into an independent category of individual rights. In addition, the author substantiates the impossibility of possessing of collective rights by legal entities.

The Universal Rule of Natural Law and Written Constitutions in the Thought of Johannes Althusius

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Witte
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Universal Theory ◽  
Government Contracts ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
Universal Rule

Calvinist jurist Johannes Althusius (1557–1638) developed what he called a ‘universal theory’ of law and politics for war-torn Europe. He called for written constitutions that separated the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of cities, provinces, nations, and empires alike and that guaranteed the natural rights and liberties of all subjects. To be valid, he argued, these constitutions had to respect the universal natural law set out in Christian and classical, biblical, and rational teachings of law, authority, and rights. To be effective, these constitutions had to recognize the symbiotic nature of human beings who are born with a dependence on God and neighbour, family and community, and who are by nature inclined to form covenantal associations to maintain liberty and community. Althusius left comprehensive Christian theory of rule of law and politics that anticipated many of the arguments of later Enlightenment theorists of social and government contracts.

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