Constitutive justice and human rights

Abstract

In order to show the validity of here proposed conception of social ontology and its advantages over descriptive theories of social reality, which in the analysis of the socio-ontological status of human rights find only legally understood normativity as present in social reality, we will first (1) lay out Searle?s interpretation of human rights. In the second step, we will (2) introduce the methodical approach and basic concepts of our socio-ontological position, and explain the structure of the relationship between justice, law, morality, social institutions and collective intentionality. At the end (3) we will show how our theory of social ontology is better than Searle?s legal positivism in examining the ontological status of human rights. At the end, (3) we show in what ways such a theory of social ontology more intuitively and with wider arguments explains the ontological status of institution of human rights than Searle?s legal positivism.