Reconstructing Human Rights

Reconstructing human rights -- Human rights and the ethics of uncertainty -- Human rights and the politics of uncertainty -- Human rights as situationist ethics -- Human rights as agonistic politics -- Human rights as democratizing ethos -- Conclusion

Behold, a new thing

We live in a human-rights world. The language of human-rights claims and numerous human-rights institutions shape almost all aspects of our political lives, yet we struggle to know how to judge this development. Scholars give us good reason to be both supportive and sceptical of the universal claims that human rights enable, alternatively suggesting that they are pillars of cross-cultural understanding of justice or the ideological justification of a violent and exclusionary global order. All too often, however, our evaluations of our human-rights world are not based on sustained consideration of their complex, ambiguous and often contradictory consequences. Reconstructing Human Rights argues that human rights are only as good as the ends they help us realise. We must attend to what ethical principles actually do in the world to know their value. So, for human rights we need to consider how the identity of humanity and the concept of rights shape our thinking, structure our political activity and contribute to social change. Reconstructing Human Rights defends human rights as a tool that should enable us to challenge political authority and established constellations of political membership by making new claims possible. Human rights mobilise the identity of humanity to make demands upon the terms of legitimate authority and challenges established political memberships. In this work, it is argued that this tool should be guided by a democratising ethos in pursuit of that enables claims for more democratic forms of politics and more inclusive political communities. While this work directly engages with debates about human rights in philosophy and political theory, in connecting our evaluations of the value of human rights to their worldly consequences, it will also be of interest to scholars considering human rights across disciplines, including Law, Sociology, and Anthropology.

This book reinterprets the history of international human rights by arguing that the 1960s were crucial to their breakthrough

States are no longer alone on the international scene. Other institutions intervene alongside States, and even sometimes in their place, such as international organizations, multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations, regions or global cities. Still, one would look in vain for clear indications in international law, including for the basic principles of an “international law of institutions” that could address the three fundamental questions of social and political organization that are representation, regulation and responsibility. What institutions may act in whose name internationally? What are the conditions for their actions to bind us legally and have the legitimacy to do so? And what institutions should be held responsible, by whom and how, in case of violation of international law? The time has come to reconstruct the international institutional order.

In recent years, more and more scholars in the world feel interested in the topic of human right protection status in China. This book hopes to serve as a window through which its readers will have a better understanding of theory and practice of human rights protection in the Chinese context. The book systematically introduces the dynamic development and progress of human rights protection in China, attaching great importance to the first white paper on Human Rights in China, “The state respects and guarantees human rights” included in the Constitution, National Human Rights Action Plan of China, and then putting forth fundamental principles to achieve international human rights standards and specific measures to improve human rights protection standards in China. Then the book further discusses “Foundations of Human Rights Guarantee in Contemporary China”, “Human Rights, Culture and Their Reconstruction in the Chinese Context” and “Socialist Legal System with Chinese Characteristics”. Then, a final chapter is dedicated to the topic of “Judicial Protection System of Human Rights in China”. In appendices, four important documents on human rights in China, as well as a list of the author’s major articles and works in the past 10 years are provided.​