JUSTICE AND RIGHTS (12541)

Instructor: Prof. Neus Torbisco Casals

1. JUSTICE AND RIGHTS: AN INTRODUCTION

1.1. Law, Morality and Politics: intersecting spheres
1.2. Conceptions of rights and the challenge of legitimacy
1.3. Justifying Human Rights

2. UTILITARIANISM

2.1. Introduction: Utilitarianism main features
2.2. Defining 'Utility'

2.3. Maximising 'Utility'
2.4. Utilitarian justifications of rights

2.5. The politics of utilitarianism: virtues and flaws

3. LIBERALISM

3.1. Introduction: individual freedom as a basic value
3.2 Justice and impartiality: Rawls' theory
3.3 Justice and equality: Dworkin's position

3.4. Liberal rights and constitutionalism

4. LIBERTARIANISM

4.1. Libertarian ideas of freedom and the neo-conservative movement
4.2. Nozick theory of entitlement
4.3. Libertarian conceptions of rights

4.4. Libertarian politics and its critics

5. THE LIMITS OF LIBERAL JUSTICE (I): COMMUNITARIANISM

5.1. The social thesis and the common good
5.2. Justice and shared meanings
5.3. The communitarian critique of liberal rights. Human Rights and relativism
5.4. Communitarian politics and the revision of liberalism

5. THE LIMITS OF LIBERAL JUSTICE (II): FEMINISM

5.1. Introduction: feminism and feminist critiques of liberalism
5.2. Impediments to Freedom: Sexual discrimination, structural inequalities and status hierarchies
5.3. Gender, Law and Politics: a critique of neutrality
5.4. En ethics of justice or an ethics of care?

6. THE LIMITS OF LIBERAL JUSTICE (III): MULTICULTURALISM

6.1. Introduction: Multiculturalism and liberal justice
6.2. Redistribution versus recognition
6.3. Freedom and equality, for whom?
6.4. Cultural rights as human rights

6.5. The politics of multiculturalism

7. BEYOND JUSTICE AND RIGHTS: MARXISM AND REPUBLICANISM

7.1. Exploitation, alienation and communist justice
7.2. Social democracy and social justice: the Marxist critique of rights
7.3. Citizenship theory and civic republicanism
7.4. Beyond justice: the pre-conditions of democracy

READINGS

Basic reading

Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy. An Introduction. Second Edition. Oxford University Press, 2002.

Requested readings for particular sessions (only selected pages to be indicated: will be available in the photocopy service).

Gerald A. Cohen, If you are Egalitarian, how come you are so rich?, Harvard University Press, 2000

Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue. The Theory and Practice of Equality, Harvard University Press, 2000

Allan Gewirth, The Community of Rights, The University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship. A Liberal theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995

Susan M. Okin, Justice, Gender and the Family, Basic Books, 1989.

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, 1971

Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and "the politics of recognition", Harvard University Press, 1992.

Neus Torbisco Casals, Group Rights as Human Rights, New York, Springer 2006

Legal disputes (Discussion part of sessions): will be regularly posted in the "Aula Moodle"

OBJECTIVES

The discourse of rights, and in particular of human rights, is a pervasive feature of contemporary liberal democracies. Different types of groups articulate their claims in the language of rights in order to preserve what they see as primary goods that the state needs to protect as a matter of justice. The evolution of the recognition and protection of individual rights in both the domestic and the international legal orders can be seen as the institutional implementation of such demands. Yet the relation between social justice and rights is controversial and poses significant questions that need to be addressed. In which sense law, morality and politics are intersecting spheres? What is the meaning of "human rights" as a legal concept? More centrally, how can the different generations of rights be morally justified?

This course will address these and other fundamental questions through examining the basic contributions of different theories of justice and assessing their impact in the political and legal practices of democratic countries and in the recent evolution of international human rights doctrines. In light of this framework we will also assess jurisprudential cases that represent contemporary controversies related with different perspectives and models of social justice - i.e. debates over the constitutional protection of social rights, on the justification of rights of minority cultures and the potential challenges for women's equality. The course seeks to give students an overview of the basic theories of justice and make them familiar with their potential institutional implications for current debates concerning human rights.