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On Human Rights, by James Griffin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, xiii + 329 + (index) 9pp (£26 hardback).ISBN 978-0-19-923878-1.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Richard Mullender
Richard Mullender*
Affiliation:
Newcastle Law School, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
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Type
Book Review
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 151 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Legal Scholars 2010

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References

14. Kennedy, D The international human rights movement: part of the problem?’ (2002) 15 Harvard Human Rights Journal 101 Google Scholar at 111–116 (arguing that the discourse of human rights ‘generalises too much’ (by offering an ‘unduly abstract’ account of people), ‘particularises too much’ (by encouraging people to embrace highly specific group-identities), and is used by ‘the West’ as an ideological resource that serves to advance its interests); M Phillips Londonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within (London: Gibson Square, 2006) ch 2 (arguing that increasing numbers of people exhibit a readiness to invoke human rights on trivial grounds and that the upshot is an ‘obnoxious “victim” culture’).

15. On the idea of a ‘philosophy of government’, see Hart, Hla Essays in Jurisprudence and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) p 198 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. See also Oakeshott, M On Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) pp 241–242 Google Scholar.

17. Griffin conveys the impression that he (like many other commentators) regards Mill as adopting an unrelentingly utilitarian approach to philosophy and practical questions. Mill, however, appears to ascribe intrinsic value to certain interests (eg ‘the permanent interests of man as a progressive being’). See Mullender, R Hate speech and pornography in Canada: a qualified deontological response to a consequentialist argument (2007) 20 Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 241 CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 245–246.

18. On deontology, see Blackburn, S The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) p 100 Google Scholar.

19. Ibid, p 77.

20. Nagel, T Equality and Partiality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) p 11 Google Scholar.

21. Ibid, pp 11 and 61.

22. Ibid, p 61.

23. On occasion Griffin employs ‘ordinary language’ method; for example, he observes: ‘[t]he notion of “meeting an interest” is rather like the notion “soothes”: something is relieved’: Griffin, J On Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) p 120 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also p 122.

24. See Parfit, D Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984) p 322 Google Scholar (noting that ‘[m]ost of us do not distinguish persons from [the broader category of] human beings’).

25. On the protection of human rights as an Allied war aim, see Mullender, R Book review: a. Clapham, A Very Short Introduction to Human Rights ’ (2008) 28 Legal Studies 641 CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 643.

26. See Mazower, M Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (London: Allen Lane, 2008) p 414 Google Scholar. See also Evans, RJ The Third Reich at War 1939–1945: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster (London: Allen Lane, 2008) p 85 Google Scholar. (Those who fell within the category of life unworthy of life were liable to, among other things, compulsory sterilisation and compulsory euthanasia. See Ferguson, N The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred (London: Allen Lane, 2006) pp 264–265 Google Scholar.)

27. On egalitarianism in Aquinas's thinking, see Finnis, J Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) pp 222–252 Google Scholar. See also Berlin, I The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters on the History of Ideas (London: Pimlico, 1990) p 21 Google Scholar (on the egalitarianism of St Paul).

28. Hobbes, T Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) p 92 Google Scholar.

29. Sullivan, RJ An Introduction to Kant's Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) pp 11–12 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. Taylor, C A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007) p 160 Google Scholar.

31. Crowder, G Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and Pluralism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004) p 61 Google Scholar.

32. Habermas, J The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999 Google Scholar) ch 7.

33. Oakeshott, M Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1990) pp 363–367 Google Scholar, 370 and 382–383.

34. Berlin, I Freedom and its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty (London: Pimlico, 2003) pp 19–20 Google Scholar, 31–37 and 43–49.

35. Simmonds, NE Bringing the outside in’ (1993) 13 OJLS 147 CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 155.

36. Ibid, at 153.

37. Ibid, at 155 and 158.

38. Ibid, at 156 (identifying John Finnis as a maximalist). See also Finnis, JM Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980 Google Scholar) ch 7 (on community).

39. We find a further intimation of maximalism in Griffin when he draws a distinction between those who live lives of ‘accomplishment’ and those whose lives exhibit ‘emptiness’. See On Human Rights, p 120.

40. M Nussbaum ‘Rage and reason’New Republic 18 August 1997, pp 36 and 42. See also Posner, R The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997) p 7 Google Scholar et seq (on ‘moral entrepreneurs’).

41. Nussbaum, ibid, p 36. See also D Kennedy, above n 14, at 116 (arguing that ‘the human rights movement’ tends to promise more than it can deliver).

42. See The Blair Doctrine 22 April 1999 (transcript of Blair's speech), available at http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:iVoOhTDz2PwJ:www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/in. See also Tony Blair's speech at the Labour Party Conference in 2001, available at http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:OaWqcp3D4HQJ:www.guardian.co.uk/politics and Gray, J Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (London: Allen Lane, 2009 Google Scholar) ch 11.

43. See Kundera, M The Unbearable Lightness of Being (London: Faber & Faber, 1995 Google Scholar) pp 245, 250 and 253 (arguing that (some) proponents of human rights see in them the means by which to establish a ‘smiling brotherhood’).

44. For an approach to human rights on the maximalist model described in the text, see Fredman, S Human Rights Transformed: Positive Rights and Positive Duties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). On the idea of a ‘realistic utopia’, see Rawls, J Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007) pp 10–11 Google Scholar.

45. Kymlicka, W Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 2002) pp 3–5 Google Scholar.

46. Overy, R The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars (London: Allen Lane, 2009) p 37 Google Scholar (on Western civilisation) (referring to A Toynbee ‘Whither mankind?’ BBC broadcast, 26 March 1931).

47. Ibid.