Politics of Human Rights Final

Maurice Cranston, “Are There Any Human Rights?”

• Socioeconomic rights are not human rights

• Three tests of authenticity of human rights

  • test of practicability

  • test of genuine universality

  • test of paramount importance

• Which test(s) do social and economic rights fail, and why?

  • Social and economic rights fail all of the tests. Civil and political rights pass each test, specifically the practicability test (but he fails to go into detail about the other two). Socioeconomic rights are not practical because of its implementation. Many countries are so poor that they are unable to provide the adequate resources for individuals, On the contrary, civil and political rights take on negative duties, therefore it is easily secured. The needs of each person can vary, while civil and political rights are ideologies that can be granted to all persons due to their abstract nature. A government can determine who gets certain freedoms, but they can not “fabricate” economic stability.

  • For the test of genuine universality, Cranston uses the right to “vacation” to discredit the entirety of socioeconomic rights. Vacation time is related to time off when someone secures a job, rather than (tbh idk what he was trying to argue here).

  • Lastly, he uses the analogy: “Just because I buy my kids presents doesn’t mean that I have to buy gifts for every other kid in the neighborhood.” It is a logical fallacy because the well-being of an individual does not mean the stability of others is unnecessary. (Essentially, to guarantee equal (or equitable) wealth, it would require a redistribution of resources. Therefore, wealthier people are less inclined to guarantee the rights of the poor as they would have to inevitability give up a portion of their net worth or pay more taxes.

Despite the problematic nature of his argument, it continues to be referenced.

Aryeh Neier, “Social and Economic Rights: A Critique”

• Rights only have meaning if it is possible to enforce: social and economic rights are unmanageable through the judicial process

• Distinguishes between the incidental costs of protecting civil and political rights from the much more substantial costs of economic redistribution

• Economic and security matters ought to be questions of public debate, subject to the democratic process

Neier believes that socioeconomic rights, as the main component of socioeconomic rights, should be up to the people. Therefore, socioeconomic rights constitute a policy issue rather than human rights.

Rights need exact/specific laws. Civil and political rights have this specificity, while economic rights vary depending on different needs. It also depends on the countries' available resources, as there are different economies, currencies, accessibility to natural resources, etc. Unlike human rights, social and economic rights do not possess a universal nature.

For example, a right to education or housing have to be managed through the democratic process, The democrstic process has two issues it must deal with: public safety and allocation of society’s resources. Congress passes laws about the taxes we pay. In the same way, Congress should decide issues about poverty rather than the Supreme Court.

Henry Shue, Basic Rights, chapters 1-3

• Moral right: three elements

  • the rational basis for a justified demand

  • the actual enjoyment

  • socially guaranteed against standard threats.

• Basic rights; must have the three elements of moral rights

• The enjoyment of basic rights is essential to the enjoyment of all other rights

• Basic rights: liberty, security, and subsistence,

• All basic rights entail 3 kinds of correlative duties

  • to avoid depriving

  • to protect from deprivation

  • and to aid the deprived

Socioeconomic rights are neither basic rights nor human rights but rather policy issues. Socioeconomic and cultural rights generate positive duties, and in majority of cases individuals or governments of poor countries can’t provide the proper resources for each person’s needs. On the other hand, civil and political rights are more concrete and require negative duties, so they can be enforced and are universal in nature.

Rights are meaningless unless they have the feasibility to be enforced. So if socioeconomic and cultural rights are not universally feasible, therefore they do not possess the requirements which constitute a universal, human right.

Mathias Risse, “How Does the Global Order Harm the Poor?”

• Does the global order harm the poor?

• Institutional Thesis

• Geographical Thesis

• Integration Thesis

• Harm: three types

• Uncompensated Exclusion

  • Egalitarian Ownership - necessary to prove harm as rights violating (as opposed to the other type of harms)

• No global distributive justice because rights (“harm 3”) are not violated

Thomas Nagel, “The Problem of Global Justice”

• Obligations of justice arise between individuals who form an association—in a state

• Claims of justice can only take place in a state because a state has a sovereign power/gov’t;state is a precondition to justice

• Since there is no global state/gov’t—no global justice (no distributive justice)