Human rights in political and legal theory

Abstract

Contemporary academia generates vast amounts of human rights theory. Lawyers and anthropologists, philosophers and political scientists, historians and even natural scientists have contributed, and are contributing, to it. This chapter focuses on debates about human rights in legal and political theory. Providing a comprehensive exposition of theoretical argument in these two fields is still no easy task, particularly if one aims to offer an account that is not confined to the province of the present and includes a broader temporal dimension. To navigate these challenges I have chosen four avenues of inquiry. The first one of inquiry concerns the relationship between the idea of human rights and the natural rights tradition: are human rights a re-statement or an evolution of natural rights? Or do they represent a genuine novelty? Secondly, the debate on foundations is examined, distinguishing between those who argue that foundational inquiries should be at the centre of theorising about human rights and those who consider argument about foundations to be inconclusive and even counterproductive. The last two avenues of inquiry focus on the two terms that shape any dialectics on human rights: the individual and power. Every theory of human rights will rest on, and in some cases openly advance, a conception of the individual and a phenomenology of power.