scholarly journals L'objet des droits constitutionnels à l'égalité

2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Proulx

This article is exclusively devoted to enquiring into the purpose of equality rights guaranteed by sections 15 and 28 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. By first retracing the concept of equality from both a legal and philosophical perspective, the author comes to the conclusion that the juxtaposition of values of human dignity and social justice has brought on the most powerful change in the concept of equality. By invoking these two values in unison, authoritative writings, legislators and the courts have on the one hand, come to recognize the insufficiency of formal legal equality and thereby integrate the principle of substantial equality and have, on the other, conceived equality not merely with regard to individuals alone, but also by taking into account groups that society tends to neglect or dominate due to the existence of tenacious prejudices. The author then specifically examines the Canadian legal and socioeconomic context in search of the purpose of equality rights enshrined in the Charter of rights and shows that the addition of section 28 and the enumeration of grounds of discrimination to equality rights in s.s. 15(1) has as its purpose to provide additional protection to women and members of certain underprivileged groups. This special protection is indicative, in the author's view, of a clear constitutional choice in favour of a substantial conception of equality taking into account the collective dimension of discrimination.

AI & Society ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Chiodo

AbstractWe continuously talk about autonomous technologies. But how can words qualifying technologies be the very same words chosen by Kant to define what is essentially human, i.e. being autonomous? The article focuses on a possible answer by reflecting upon both etymological and philosophical issues, as well as upon the case of autonomous vehicles. Most interestingly, on the one hand, we have the notion of (human) “autonomy”, meaning that there is a “law” that is “self-given”, and, on the other hand, we have the notion of (technological) “automation”, meaning that there is something “offhand” that is “self-given”. Yet, we are experiencing a kind of twofold shift: on the one hand, the shift from defining technologies in terms of automation to defining technologies in terms of autonomy and, on the other hand, the shift from defining humans in terms of autonomy to defining humans in terms of automation. From a philosophical perspective, the shift may mean that we are trying to escape precisely from what autonomy founds, i.e. individual responsibility of humans that, in the Western culture, have been defined for millennia as rational and moral decision-makers, even when their decisions have been the toughest. More precisely, the shift may mean that we are using technologies, and in particular emerging algorithmic technologies, as scapegoats that bear responsibility for us by making decisions for us. Moreover, if we consider the kind of emerging algorithmic technologies that increasingly surround us, starting from autonomous vehicles, then we may argue that we also seem to create a kind of technological divine that, by being always with us through its immanent omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence and inscrutability, can always be our technological scapegoat freeing us from the most unbearable burden of individual responsibility resulting from individual autonomy.


Author(s):  
Edward G. Goetz

This chapter provides an overview of two different ways of working towards racial justice and regional equity. The two approaches are integration efforts on the one hand and community development efforts on the other. The tension between these two approaches is described as a conflict among groups that are generally allied on issues of social justice. It is argued that this debate is a tension within a race-conscious policy alliance, and represents a disagreement about how best to achieve the common goal of racial equity.


Youth Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 147322542090284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Smith

This article draws on historical understandings and contemporary models of diversion in order to develop a critical framework and agenda for progressive practice. The argument essentially revolves around the contention that typically diversionary interventions have been constrained by the contextual and ideological frames within which they operate. They have in some cases been highly successful in reducing the numbers of young people being drawn into the formal criminal justice system; however, this has largely been achieved pragmatically, by way of an accommodation with the prevailing logic of penal practices. Young people have been diverted at least partly because they have been ascribed a lesser level of responsibility for their actions, whether by virtue of age or other factors to which their delinquent behaviour is attributed. This ultimately sets limits to diversion, on the one hand, and also offers additional legitimacy to the further criminalisation of those who are not successfully ‘diverted’, on the other. By contrast, the article concludes that a ‘social justice’ model of diversion must ground its arguments in principles of children’s rights and the values of inclusion and anti-oppressive practice.


2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 555-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Gregg Bloche

Taking notice of race is both risky and inevitable, in medicine no less than in other endeavors. The literature on race as a classifying tool in clinical research poses this core dilemma: On the one hand, race can be a useful stand-in for unstudied genetic and environmental factors that yield differences in disease expression and therapeutic response. On the other hand, racial distinctions have social meanings that are often pejorative or worse, especially when these distinctions are cast as culturally or biologically fixed. Our country's troubled past in this regard and the persistence of race-related disadvantage should keep us on notice about this hazard. Yet paying attention to race in order to ameliorate past wrongs sometimes supports the quest for social justice, as Dorothy Roberts points out in this issue. And at times, as Jay Cohn and Raj Bhopal note, attention to race can make a therapeutic difference, to the point of saving lives.


2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dinesh Bhugra ◽  
Susham Gupta

SummaryThe principles of primacy of patient welfare, patient autonomy and social justice are fundamental to medical and psychiatric professionalism. Medical professionalism is also about encouraging and celebrating good practice. As a set of values and behaviours on the one hand, and relationships with patients, carers and other stakeholders on the other, the implicit contract between psychiatry and society needs to be renegotiated regularly. Serious threats to medical professionalism in the past 30 years have led to the demoralisation of professionals. Learned helplessness and a perceived loss of autonomy have been recognised as important factors in the ‘loss’ of professionalism. Psychiatry as a profession needs to identify its core attributes, skills and competencies. Professionalism should allow individuals to set and maintain their own standards of care.


2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 150-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Bird

AbstractAlthough dignity figures prominently in modern ethical discourse, and in the writings of moral and political philosophers writing today, we still lack a clear account of how the concept of dignity might be implicated in various forms of moral reasoning. This essay tries to make progress on two fronts. First, it attempts to clarify the possible roles the concept of dignity might play in moral discourse, with particular reference to Hart's distinction between positive and critical morality. Second, it offers a new typology of dignity concepts and mobilizes it to, on the one hand, criticize some familiar construals of “human dignity” and, on the other, to advertise the possible virtues of an unfamiliar way of thinking about dignity as a moral concept.


Author(s):  
Suzy Killmister

Contours of Dignity develops a theory geared towards explaining the complex and varied role dignity plays in our moral lives. This includes the relationship between dignity and respect; the ways in which shame and humiliation can constitute dignity violations; and the relationship between dignity and human rights. Dignity, according to this theory, comes in three strands: personal dignity, social dignity, and status dignity. Each strand involves a specific form of respect. On the one hand, personal dignity involves self-respect while social and status dignity involve the respect of others. On the other hand, personal and social dignity both involve appraisal respect, while status dignity involves recognition respect. With these distinctions in hand, Contours of Dignity then explores the moral significance of dignity, offering a novel explanation of the source and scope of individuals’ claims to have their dignity respected. The book concludes with a discussion of the relationship between dignity and human rights, arguing that we should understand human dignity as a social construct, but one that nonetheless vindicates the human rights project.


Young ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Sánchez García ◽  
Carles Feixa Pàmpols

Rap and mahragan were the sound of youths that demanded freedom and social justice in Tahrir Square and in Tunisia Parliament Square sit-ins during 2011. It may have been, not merely the soundtrack of the revolution, but a motivating factor in bringing people into the streets and reshaping their basic political subjectivity: a core process of any revolutionary change in a country’s social and political structures. On the one hand, rap and mahragan are used by young people as a way of calling into question the processes of marginalization. On the other hand, young people use it as a way of participating in public life. Despite its differences, from a mixed analysis using the data collected in the SAHWA project, both qualitative and quantitative, this article proves how rap and mahragan music scenes (re)produce informal spaces as an alternative to their social marginalization and positioned them into Tunisian and Egyptian political arenas in different places according to environmental political dialectics.


Pneuma ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-217
Author(s):  
Antipas L. Harris

Abstract This essay advances hermeneutical insights for emerging black pentecostal scholars to consider. The salient question is, “What distinguishes black Pentecostalism?” This study revisits James H. Cone’s sources for black theology for insight into the role of blackness in shaping black Pentecostalism. On the one hand, the study dispels the myth that black Pentecostalism is inherently a spiritual alternative to the fight for social justice. On the other hand, it calls for critical dialogue between Cone’s sources for black theology and black Pentecostalism to advance scholarship on the formation of black pentecostal hermeneutics. This essay explains that blackness is more than a cultural and experiential reality. Blackness is a theological source that correlates with other sources in shaping black Pentecostalism. Blackness, moreover, legitimates black pentecostal proclivities for the integration of the faith, spirituality, and social advocacy. Theological blackness in Pentecostalism has historically distinguished black Pentecostalism from subsequent white Pentecostalism.


Author(s):  
Kai Horsthemke

There have been various approaches to the transmission and transformation of systems, practices, knowledge and concepts in higher education in recent decades, chief among which are drives towards indigenisation, on the one hand, and towards internationalisation, on the other. After briefly discussing and dispensing with radical versions of these, theories that reject any claim to validity or legitimacy by the rival approach, this article examines more nuanced accounts that deserve appropriately serious consideration. Thus, in the former instance, there is an emphasis on the local that nonetheless acknowledges a debt to the global, whereas conversely the emphasis on the global is seen as compatible with an acknowledgement of diversity, difference and particularity. What is gained and what is lost in these various approaches to educational transmission and transformation? After reflecting, in this regard, on lessons from both Africa and Europe – in particular, on the debates in South Africa around Africanisation and decolonisation, and in Germany around global interdependence – I cautiously endorse the idea of ‘transculturality’ (as contrasted with ‘multiculturality’ and ‘interculturality’) as a promising philosophical perspective on transmission of knowledge and practices, and as conceptualising transformation of higher education. The role of philosophy, in particular, consists in part in counteracting the hegemony of both traditional and homogenising (‘colonising’) authority.


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