FREEDOM OF THOUGHT?

Freedom of thought is often explicitly protected in constitutions and human rights documents, and even more often employed as a rallying cry against state tyranny. It is not so clear, however, just what freedom of thought is, what it would be to threaten it, and how, if at all, it differs from basic liberty or freedom. This essay seeks to analyze the idea of freedom of thought, to pose some skeptical questions about its alleged independent existence, and to ask, again with a skeptical mindset, what it is to protect it and why its protection should be so commonly valued.

Evidence and Harm

This chapter examines the evidence for the central contention of anti-pornography feminism, namely, that pornography causes harm to women. The chapter examines experimental and population-level studies and argues that the evidence for the relevant sort of causality is weak. The experimental studies suffer from serious methodological flaws, including the failure to have their male subjects masturbate with the pornographic materials to which the studies expose them. Population-level studies are crucial to establishing the relevant causal claim about harm to women, but the existing studies are sparse and fail to control for potentially relevant variables. The weakness of the body of evidence regarding a link between pornography and harm to women is highlighted by contrasting the case of pornography with that of alcohol consumption and social harm, where the links have been scientifically established. Moreover, even though alcohol consumption is not an exercise of any basic liberty and the link to extensive social harm is strongly supported by scientific studies, legal suppression of such consumption is a morally objectionable infringement on the liberty of adults. Pornography consumption is the exercise of a basic liberty, and, in light of the comparatively weak evidence of pornography’s social harm, legal suppression of such material amounts to a much clearer instance of the objectionable curtailment of individual liberty. The chapter concludes with an examination of materials that are not sexually explicit but depict violence against women.

The Right to Strike and Contestatory Citizenship

Is the right to strike a fundamental right? If so, what are its philosophical foundations? This chapter argues that the right to strike is a fundamental right resting upon three basic liberties: freedom from forced labour, freedom of association, and freedom of expression. In so doing, it challenges and rejects two dominant strategies in arguing for a fundamental right to strike: (a) that the right is derivative of a single basic liberty; (b) that the right is derivative of a right to collective bargaining. The contours of these basic liberties are developed using the republican ideal of non-domination and contestatory citizenship. Having defended a republican account of the philosophical foundations of the right to strike, the chapter then uses that framework to explore how the basic regulatory questions of a ‘right to strike’ have been addressed in Canada, the UK, and the US.

BASIC LIBERTIES, THE MORAL POWERS AND WORKPLACE DEMOCRACY

The article responds to previous work, by Martin O’Neill, about the Rawlsian case for an entitlement to an element of workplace democracy. Of the three arguments for such an entitlement that O’Neill discusses, this article focuses mainly on the one he rejects (on the grounds of its having an implausible premise): the Fundamental Liberties Argument, according to which the right to an element of workplace democracy is a basic liberty. This article argues that while the argument can be improved to withstand O’Neill’s objection, it is invalid. The article sets out a new argument, the Argument from Risk to the Moral Powers. While inspired by the Fundamental Liberties Argument, it is valid. Moreover, its premises are at least as plausible as those of one of the two arguments upon which O’Neill builds his Rawlsian case for an entitlement to an element of workplace democracy.

Basic Rights

Chapter 6 analyzes how Schmitt applied his state and constitutional theory to Weimar. It shows Schmitt theorized a “counter-constitution” that entrenched liberal basic rights absolutely against democratic amendment procedures. It challenges the belief that Schmitt was a “relentlessly” illiberal thinker. This chapter analyzes how Schmitt applied his thought to Weimar in opposition to the prevailing positivist interpretation of the constitution, which held that it committed above all to democratic equal chance. Schmitt argued that the “absolute” commitments of a liberal democratic constitution like Weimar’s could only be coherently located in basic liberty rights. This chapter also analyzes the institutions and mechanisms Schmitt theorized to guarantee these basic liberty rights, especially against democratic subversion. They include entrenchment of basic constitutional commitments, party bans, a “positive” vote of no confidence, and a stronger federal state. It concludes by analyzing Schmitt’s reflections on the improvements the Bonn Grundgesetz made to the Weimar Constitution.

Freedom of Thought as a Basic Liberty

Freedom of thought has been lauded in political theory and celebrated in human rights discourse. But what kind of freedom is it? I propose that freedom of thought deserves status as a basic liberty, given the significance of thought to human life, the fundamental importance of freedom of thought in establishing and sustaining crucial rights and freedoms, and the value of being able to develop and experience one’s thoughts without undue influence from others.

Completing Rawls's arguments for equal political liberty and its fair value: the argument from self-respect

Despite the vast literature on Rawls's work, few have discussed his arguments for the value of democracy. When his arguments have been discussed, they have received staunch criticism. Some critics have charged that Rawls's arguments are not deeply democratic. Others have gone further, claiming that Rawls's arguments denigrate democracy. These criticisms are unsurprising, since Rawls's arguments, as arguments that the principle of equal basic liberty needs to include democratic liberties, are incomplete. In contrast to his trenchant remarks about core civil liberties, Rawls does not say much about the inclusion of political liberties of a democratic sort – such as the right to vote – among the basic liberties.In this paper, I complete some of Rawls's arguments and show that he has grounds for including political liberties, particularly those of a democratic nature, in the principle of equal basic liberty. In doing so, I make some beginning steps toward illustrating the genuinely democratic nature of Rawls's arguments. Rawls believes that a few different arguments can be given for democratic institutions and that these arguments work together to support the value of democracy. In this paper, I focus on Rawls's arguments relating to self-respect. I focus on this set of arguments because they are among the strongest of Rawls's arguments for equal political liberty and its fair value.

Human Rights of Children with Disabilities in Israel - The Vision and the Reality

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning /> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas /> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables /> <w:SnapToGridInCell /> <w:WrapTextWithPunct /> <w:UseAsianBreakRules /> <w:DontGrowAutofit /> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id=ieooui></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language:HE;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial; color: black;">The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, from 1989, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, from 2007, define a vision in which party States ensure the welfare of children with disabilities and their right to enjoy a full and respected life in the community, with their families, in conditions which meet their basic needs and ensure their ability to actualize their potential, enjoy basic liberty, freedom of expression, active and inclusive participation in the community life, based on equal opportunities. Approximately 8.7% of the children in Israel cope with functional challenges, disabilities or chronic diseases requiring constant intervention through medical or non medical care. The aim of the current article is to outline the international vision defined by the Conventions and the situation in Israel regarding the rights of children with disabilities to life, life with family in the community, education, health and accessibility – as legislated and as actually implemented. The article shows that Israel is committed to the international conventions and has invested much in legislation, budget and services for ensuring the social rights of children with disabilities in all areas of life. However Israel still faces the challenges of carrying out the paradigm shift towards the human rights model of disability in practice, by ensuring equal opportunities; by abolishing the poverty and discrimination of the geographical and social periphery; and by implementing inclusive education and accessible public areas and services to all.</span>

Property, Rights, and Freedom

William Perm summarized the Magna Carta thus: “First, It asserts Englishmen to be free; that's Liberty. Secondly, they that have free-holds, that's Property.” Since at least the seventeenth century, liberals have not only understood liberty and property to be fundamental, but to be somehow intimately related or interwoven. Here, however, consensus ends; liberals present an array of competing accounts of the relation between liberty and property. Many, for instance, defend an essentially instrumental view, typically seeing private property as justified because it is necessary to maintain or protect other, more basic, liberty rights. Important to our constitutional tradition has been the idea that “[t]he right to property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive a people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty.” Along similar lines, it has been argued that only an economic system based on private property disperses power and resources, ensuring that private people in civil society have the resources to oppose the state and give effect to basic liberties. Alternatively, it is sometimes claimed that only those with property develop the independent characters that are necessary to preserve a regime of liberty. But not only have liberals insisted that, property is a means of preserving liberty, they have often conceived of it as an embodiment of liberty, or as a type of liberty, or indeed as identical to liberty. This latter view is popular among contemporary libertarians or classical liberals. Jan Narveson, for instance, bluntly asserts that “Liberty is Property,” while John Gray insists that “[t]he connection between property and the basic liberties is constitutive and not just instrumental.”