Beyond the ‘Awkward Embrace’: Disability Rights, Dialogue and ‘Law, Love and Language’ Revisited

Abstract

AbstractDespite the perceived ‘human rights revolution’ within Church teaching since Vatican II, a measure of dissonance survives between secular rights theory and practice on the one hand and, on the other, ethical thinking informed by the natural law tradition. This article examines some recent developments in that secular theory and practice for signs of possible rapprochement. In particular, it considers the way in which the emergence of ‘disability’ as a rights issue, for example in the recently ratified United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, has contributed to the transformation of equality and human rights law and so has helped shape a broader transformation of rights theory and practice. Central to that transformation has been the ambition of establishing human rights as the basis of a progressive political programme, as witnessed for example by the work of Sandra Fredman and by the Hamlyn Lectures of Conor Gearty, whose Catholic provenance makes his approach especially salient. The article concludes by considering Herbert McCabe's interpretation of Aquinas’ ethics, especially in his Law, Love and Language, and proposes some potentially fruitful points of contact between McCabe's approach and the identified developments in secular rights theory.