Moral and Political Conceptions of Human Rights: Implications for Theory and Practice

In recent years, political philosophers have debated whether human rights are a special class of moral rights we all possess simply by virtue of our common humanity and which are universal in time and space, or whether they are essentially modern political constructs defined by the role they play in an international legal-political practice that regulates the relationship between the governments of sovereign states and their citizens. This edited volume sets out to further this debate and move it ahead by rethinking some of its fundamental premises and applying it to new and challenging domains, such as socio-economic rights, indigenous rights, the rights of immigrants and the human rights responsibilities of corporations. Beyond the philosophy of human rights, the book has a broader relevance by contributing to key themes in the methodology of political philosophy and addressing urgent issues in contemporary global policy making.

Reidar Maliks is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Universitetet i Oslo. His main research interests focus on political philosophy, including human rights, constitutionalism and the philosophy of Kant.

Johan Karlsson Schaffer is an Associate Professor at the School of Global Studies, Göteborgs Universitet, Sweden and a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, Universitetet i Oslo. His main research interests are in the areas of political international theory, especially human rights and democratic theory.