Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part One Conceptualizing Human Rights
- Part Two Justifications for Human Rights
- Adagio
- 4 Legal Justifications
- 5 Interest Justifications
- 6 Agency Justifications
- 7 Ontology, Justice, and Human Rights
- Part Three Applications of Human Rights
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
4 - Legal Justifications
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part One Conceptualizing Human Rights
- Part Two Justifications for Human Rights
- Adagio
- 4 Legal Justifications
- 5 Interest Justifications
- 6 Agency Justifications
- 7 Ontology, Justice, and Human Rights
- Part Three Applications of Human Rights
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Part Two of our exploration examines what I take to be the principal approaches to justifying human rights: legal justifications, interest justifications, and agency justifications. There are others that we won’t explore – such as religious justifications. Some authors (though primarily in one category) also work in another category, such as Joseph Raz, whom I characterize primarily in the interest category even though he has done much work in the legal category as well. To make sense of these dualizers, I concentrate mostly on the justification rather than the application of human rights. (For a discussion of applications, see Part Three.)
Part Two ends with an analysis of the role that ontology should or should not play in our understanding of human rights. It is certainly a key concept that is largely ignored in contemporary discourse on human rights.
Chapter 4 examines the proposition that human rights are best understood as the result of legal justii cations. Those who are attracted to this position will also be those who are most drawn to the presentation in Chapter 2 on the recent history of human rights. In this chapter some of the philosophical consequences of this position are examined in the light of the proponents of this position and this author’s critique of the same.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Natural Human RightsA Theory, pp. 106 - 126Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
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