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ABSTRACT
Should a theory of human rights that aims to be faithful to human rights practice treat the practice as unified or as consisting of different and distinct practices? I argue that we do better to treat the practice as embodying a multiplicity of contributing practices, and show how we can design a theory that can be true to each one of them. The discussion proceeds via a reconstruction and critique of Charles Beitz’s The Idea of Human Rights, which is the most influential practical conception of human rights to date.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. For Beitz’s own response to this challenge, see Beitz (Citation2009, p. 124): ‘The formal mechanisms for monitoring human rights violations are overwhelmingly constituted of states and their reporting procedures rely primarily on states (nongovernmental organizations have an important but subsidiary role). It is true that there have been efforts to frame human rights principles directly applicable to business firms, but thus far these efforts have lacked the independent structure and regularity to justify considering them as elements of an ongoing global practice.’ But see Ruggie (Citation2013) on the human rights and obligations of corporations and Skogly (Citation2012) on the IMF and World Bank.
2. See, e.g., Ruggie (Citation2013); Skogly (Citation2012). According to Skogly, ‘The academic research in international human rights law is increasingly paying attention to and questioning the traditional teaching that only States have obligations according to international human rights law. Much is now being done in three specific areas: the responsibility of the individual, the role of paramilitary groups within countries, and the position of private international actors. Not much work has been, or is being, done on the obligations of intergovernmental organisations, and it is here that the present work will fill a void in the literature on obligations according to international human rights law.’ (8).
3. See, e.g., Simmons (Citation2009); Goodale and Engle-Merry (Citation2007); Engle-Merry (Citation2006).
4. According to Engle-Merry (Citation2006, p. 218): ‘Human rights are clearly making a significant contribution to global reform projects concerned with violence against women. The ideas produced in global settings through international deliberations are being appropriated by national political leaders and NGO activists in India, China, Fiji, and Hong Kong, and, to a lesser extent, in the United States. Human rights ideas about violence against women are … percolating into local communities, primarily through the mediation of activists who translate the global language into locally relevant terms.’ See also Simmons (Citation2009, p. 16): ‘Treaties alter politics through the channel of social mobilization, where domestic actors have the motive and the means to form and to demand their effective implementation.’
5. For more on why we ought to abandon the idea of rights possessed in ‘virtue of humanity’, see Sangiovanni (Citation2017, Ch., p. 4), and Beitz (Citation2009, Ch., p. 3).
6. I develop the Broad View at much greater length in Sangiovanni (Citation2017).
7. The parallel here is to MacCallum’s triadic concept of freedom, which also is articulated in terms of three variables that get assigned by different conceptions of freedom. See MacCallum (Citation1967).
8. I say more about this, and why Allen Buchanan’s rejection of the ‘mirroring view’ is only partially correct in Sangiovanni (Citation2017, Ch., p. 4).
9. One might think that one can just state the more particular right as a special case of a more general right, which is held universally. So a human right to a legal and safe abortion is (in a strict sense) not universally possessed, but a right to sexual and reproductive health is. Since the former is an instance of the latter, the former is, in the relevant sense, universally possessed as well. The trouble is that the idea of ‘universal possession’ then becomes trivial. Even the most invidiously discriminatory ‘rights’ can be given a general form. A husband’s ‘human right’ to the obedience of his wife can be recast as an instance of a more general human right to respect for the family. The same thing goes for conditionalizing and embedding the antecedent into the content of the right to make it universal. All human beings can be said, for example, to have the following right: A human right [to a safe and legal abortion if one is a woman] and a human right [to the obedience of one’s wife if one is a man]. For more on why conditionalization fails, see Sangiovanni (Citation2017, Ch., p. 4).
10. Special duties will apply to states operating in conflict zones, for example, as Ruggie himself argues in Just Business (Ruggie, Citation2013). But even there, they should not mirror those of states.
11. See also Ruggie (Citation2013, Ch., p. 2).
12. Here I share Dworkin’s skepticism of ‘psychological state’ theories of interpretation. See Dworkin (Citation2011, p. 128ff).
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Notes on contributors
Andrea Sangiovanni
Andrea Sangiovanni is Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London. From 2018–2020, he was Professor of Social and Political Theory at the European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy. He received a Phd and BA from Harvard University, and was a Randall Dillard Postdoctoral Fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge (2005–2007).