Responsibilities: a Critical Legal Defence of Human Rights

Abstract

For many, human rights have become a panacea for the injustices of society, for example, globalisation, poverty, discrimination, climate change. But has this rights’ ‘inflation’ been a prima facie good? Has the rise in human rights merely propounded a self-centred individualism, exacerbating large swathes of society who are already marginalised and socially excluded? Rightly, human rights have therefore been the subject of a multitude of criticisms, from a range of critical perspectives: Marxism, critical legal studies, communitarianism, feminism, critical race theory etc. However, this unique study pushes back against this tide of ‘anti-rights’, providing an original defence of human rights, from the perspective of a progressive political community of rights-holders and duty-bearers. Possessing rights might place a rights-holder at the centre of their moral universe, to the exclusion of all others, but that holder of rights cannot expect others to bear the duty of their rights without exercising the same obligation to the rights of others in return. So, far from emphasising isolation and self-interest, responsibilities arising from the exercise of rights engender a keen sense of solidarity, a principle integral to critical legal theory. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of Human Rights, Constitutional Law, and Legal and Political Theory.

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