Defining Rights And Wrongs

Human rights complaints attract a great deal of public interest, but what is going on below the surface? When people contact a human rights lawyer, how do they think about and use human rights discourse? How are complaints turned into cases? Can administrative systems be both effective and fair? Defining Rights and Wrongs investigates the day-to-day practices of low-level officials and intermediaries as they construct domestic human rights complaints. It identifies the values that a human rights system should uphold if it is to promote mutual respect and foster the personal dignity and equal rights of citizens.

This is a wholly new and compelling answer to one of the most persistent dilemmas in both law and moral philosophy: If rights are "natural"-if, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, it is "self-evident that all men are endowed . . . with certain inalienable rights"-where do these rights come from? Does natural law really exist outside the formal structure of humanly enacted law? On the other hand, if rights are nothing more than the product of human law, what argument is there for allowing the "rights" of a few people to outweigh the preferences of the majority? In this book, renowned legal scholar Alan Dershowitz offers a fresh resolution to this age-old dilemma: Rights, he argues, do not come from God, nature, logic, or law alone. They arise out of particular experiences with injustice. While justice is an elusive concept, hard to define and subject to conflicting interpretations, injustice is immediate, intuitive, widely agreed upon and very tangible. This is a timely book that will have an immediate impact on our political dialogue, from the intersection of religion and law to recent quandaries surrounding the right to privacy, voting rights, and the right to marry. More than that, it is a passionate case for the recognition of human rights in a rigorously secular framework. Rights from Wrongs will be the first book to propose a theory of rights that emerges not from some theory of perfect justice but from its opposite: from the bottom up, from trial and error, and from our collective experience of injustice.

The Canadian Charter of Rights is composed of words that describe the foundations of a just society: equality, freedom, and democracy. These words of justice have inspired struggles for civil rights, self-determination, trade unionism, the right to vote, and social welfare. Why is it, then, that fifteen years after the entrenchment of the Charter, social injustice remains pervasive in Canada? Joel Bakan explains why the Charter has failed to promote social justice, and why it may even impede it. He argues that the Charter's fine-sounding words of justice are 'just words.' Freedom, equality and democracy are fundamental principles of social justice. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms entrenches them in Canada's highest law, the constitution. Yet the Charter has failed to promote social justice in Canada. In Just Words, Joel Bakan explains why. Sophisticated in its analyses but clearly written and accessible, Just Words is cutting-edge commentary by one of Canada's rising intellectuals.

What's Wrong with Rights? argues that contemporary rights-talk obscures the importance civic virtue, military effectiveness and the democratic law legitimacy. It draws upon legal and moral philosophy, moral theology, and court judgments. It spans discussions from medieval Christendom to contemporary debates about justified killing.

Wide-ranging and ambitious, Justice combines moral philosophy and Christian ethics to develop an important theory of rights and of justice as grounded in rights. Nicholas Wolterstorff discusses what it is to have a right, and he locates rights in the respect due the worth of the rights-holder. After contending that socially-conferred rights require the existence of natural rights, he argues that no secular account of natural human rights is successful; he offers instead a theistic account. Wolterstorff prefaces his systematic account of justice as grounded in rights with an exploration of the common claim that rights-talk is inherently individualistic and possessive. He demonstrates that the idea of natural rights originated neither in the Enlightenment nor in the individualistic philosophy of the late Middle Ages, but was already employed by the canon lawyers of the twelfth century. He traces our intuitions about rights and justice back even further, to Hebrew and Christian scriptures. After extensively discussing justice in the Old Testament and the New, he goes on to show why ancient Greek and Roman philosophy could not serve as a framework for a theory of rights. Connecting rights and wrongs to God's relationship with humankind, Justice not only offers a rich and compelling philosophical account of justice, but also makes an important contribution to overcoming the present-day divide between religious discourse and human rights.

First published in 2002. This is Volume VI of twelve in the Library of Philosophy series on Ethics. Written in 1971, this text looks at our knowledge of right and wrong and looks at topics of whether our knowledge of morality is a delusion and asks questions around moral judgment and they are subjective, the Universalization principle of a moral sense, God's commandments and human duties and finishes with suggestions of other reasons for actions.

Where is the line between instinct and free will in humans? How far can technology and medicine go to manipulate the brain? With every new discovery about the human mind, more and more questions emerge about the boundaries of consciousness, responsibility, and how far neuroscience research can go. The fledgling field of neuroethics has sought answers to these questions since the first formal neuroethics conference was held in 2002. This groundbreaking volume collects the expert and authoritative writings published since then that have laid the groundwork for this rapidly expanding debate. Defining Right and Wrong in Brain Science traverses the breadth of neuroethics, exploring six broad areas--including free will, moral responsibility, and legal responsibility; psychopharmacology; and brain injury and brain death--in thirty provocative articles. The scientific and ethical consequences of neuroscience research and technology are plumbed by leading thinkers and scientists, from Antonio Damasio's "The Neural Basics of Social Behavior: Ethical Implications" to "Monitoring and Manipulating Brain Function" by Martha J. Farah and Paul Root Wolpe. These and other in-depth chapters articulate the thought-provoking questions that emerge with every new scientific discovery and propose solutions that mediate between the freedom of scientific endeavor and the boundaries of ethical responsibility. As science races toward a future that is marked by startling new possibilities for our bodies and minds, Defining Right and Wrong in Brain Science is the definitive assessment of the ethical criteria guiding neuroscientists today.

Much of what we could do, we shouldn’t—and we don’t. Mark Osiel shows that common morality—expressed as shame, outrage, and stigma—is society’s first line of defense against transgressions. Social norms can be indefensible, but when they complement the law, they can save us from an alternative that is far worse: a repressive legal regime.