Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights

Rowan Cruft, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Stirling,S. Matthew Liao, Director of the Bioethics Program and Affiliated Professor of Philosophy, New York University,Massimo Renzo, Associate Professor, University of Warwick

Rowan Cruft is a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Stirling. He has published articles on the nature and justification of rights and duties, focusing on the relationship between rights, respect and individualism. His work aims to reveal the comparative importance of different forms of right including human rights, natural rights, contractual rights, property rights, legal rights.

Massimo Renzo is an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. His main research interests are in the problems of authority, political obligation, international justice and the philosophical foundations of the criminal law. He is co-editor, with R.A. Duff, Lindsay Farmer, Sandra Marshall and Victor Tadros, of the volumes The Constitutions of the Criminal Law (OUP 2010) and The Structures of the Criminal Law (OUP 2011).


S. Matthew Liao is Director of the Bioethics Program and Affiliated Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He is also Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Moral Philosophy. His research interests include ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, moral psychology, and bioethics.

Introduction: the Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, Rowan Cruft, S. Matthew Liao and Massimo Renzo
Human Rights' Foundations
1. On the Foundations of Human Rights, John Tasioulas
2. Response to John Tasioulas, Onora O'Neill
3. Human Rights as Fundamental Conditions for a Good Life, S. Matthew Liao
4. From a Good Life to Human Rights: Some Complications, Rowan Cruft
5. Is Dignity the Foundation of Human Rights?, Jeremy Waldron
6. Human Rights, Natural Rights, and Human Dignity, A. John Simmons
7. Personal Deserts and Human Rights, James W. Nickel
8. Desert and Human Rights: Response to James W. Nickel, Zofia Stemplowska
9. A Social Ontology of Human Rights, Carol Gould
10. Human Rights, Human Dignity, and Power, Pablo Gilabert
Human Rights in Law and Politics
11. Human Rights in the Emerging World Order, Joseph Raz
12. Joseph Raz on Human Rights: A Critical Appraisal, David Miller
13. Why International Legal Human Rights?, Allen Buchanan
14. Response to Buchanan, David Luban
15. Human Rights and Constitutional Law: Patterns of Mutual Validation and Legitimation, Samantha Besson
16. Response to Besson, Saladin Meckled-Garcia
17. Rescuing Proportionality, George Letsas
18. Response to Letsas, Guglielmo Verdirame
Canonical and Contested Human Rights
19. Free Speech as an Inverted Right and Democratic Persuasion, Corey Brettschneider
20. Free Speech and "Democratic Persuasion", Larry Alexander
21. Prince or Pariah? The place of Freedom of Religion in a system of International human rights, Lorenzo Zucca
22. Freedom of Religion Conceived as a Human Right, Robert Audi
23. The Right to Security, Liora Lazarus
24. Rights and Security, Victor Tadros
25. Self Determination and the Human Right to Democracy, Thomas Christiano
26. A Human Right to Democracy?, Fabienne Peter
27. The Content of the Human Right to Health, Jonathan Wolff
28. Do We have a Human Right to the Political Determinants of Health?, Kimberley Brownlee
29. A Moral Inconsistency Argument for a Basic Human Right to Subsistence, Elizabeth Ashford
Human Rights: Concerns and Alternatives
30. The Force of Subsistence Rights, Charles R. Beitz
31. The Relativity and Ethnocentricity of Human Rights, James Griffin
32. Human Needs, Human Rights, and Parochialism, Massimo Renzo
33. Human Rights in Kantian Mode: a Sketch, Katrin Flikschuh
34. Why There Cannot Be A Truly Kantian Theory of Human Rights, Andrea Sangiovanni
35. Liberty Rights and the Limits of Liberal Democracy, Jiwei Ci
36. Human Rights without the Human Good? A Reply to Ci, Simon Hope
37. Care and Human Rights, Virginia Held
38. Care and Human Rights: A Reply to Virginia Held, Susan Mendus