Search Results

Justice for Migrant Workers? The Case of Foreign Domestic Workers in Hong Kong and Singapore 1

Daniel A. Bell and Nicola Piper

in Multiculturalism in Asia

The trend in Western liberal democracies is to extend to long-term residents most, if not all, the legal rights of citizens and improving their access to citizenship for immigrants and their ... More

The trend in Western liberal democracies is to extend to long-term residents most, if not all, the legal rights of citizens and improving their access to citizenship for immigrants and their descendants. The situation is different in developed East Asian societies, where the most migrant workers work under short-term contracts without the possibility of becoming equal members of the political community. It is argued that the special circumstances in East Asian societies may justify arrangements for differential rights. The practice of hiring foreign domestic workers ‘fits’ better with the Confucian cultural heritage in East Asia; there are cultural particularities underpinning the system in East Asia which may not be shared elsewhere.Less

Limits of Commercial Investor-State Arbitration: The Need for Appellate Review

Jacques Werner

in Human Rights in International Investment Law and Arbitration

This chapter explains why investor-state arbitration is often wrongfully likened to international commercial arbitration among private parties. Investor-state arbitrations involve not only private ... More

This chapter explains why investor-state arbitration is often wrongfully likened to international commercial arbitration among private parties. Investor-state arbitrations involve not only private business interests but also public policies of the host state and citizen rights. Arbitral awards on investor-state disputes risk lacking credibility and democratic acceptability if they overrule, in non-transparent proceedings, democratically legitimate government decisions on grounds of investor-state contracts. Similar to the introduction of appellate review in the GATT/WTO dispute settlement system, the transparency, legitimacy, and legal coherence of investor-state arbitration could be enhanced by introduction of an appellate instance.Less

Liberty’s Limits on Legislation

Michael Moore

in Placing Blame: A Theory of the Criminal Law

The last piece of the puzzle needed by a rational, retributivist legislator is a theory of the restraints she should observe in prohibiting moral wrongs. Promise-breaking may be morally wrong, for ... More

The last piece of the puzzle needed by a rational, retributivist legislator is a theory of the restraints she should observe in prohibiting moral wrongs. Promise-breaking may be morally wrong, for example, but it should not be criminally prohibited. Prominent among such restraints is the general right to liberty, making it worse for a legislator to prohibit some moral wrongs than it would be to allow citizens to choose (even wrongly) whether to do such morally wrongful actions. This chapter develops a presumption of liberty (and of the values that stand behind it). It defends a derived right to liberty (where the citizen's right is derived from the more basic legislative duty to enact legislation for some reasons and not others). It also defines a sphere of basic liberty (immune to state regulation for all but the most compelling of reasons) in terms of self-identity. By way of example, these three notions are applied to the legal prohibition of recreational drug use.Less

Kant and Humanitarian Intervention

Thomas E. Hill Jr.

in Virtue, Rules, and Justice: Kantian Aspirations

This chapter sketches a Kantian deliberative perspective, the moral presumption in favor of humanitarian interventions, relevant practical considerations, and Kant’s apparently inflexible opposition ... More

This chapter sketches a Kantian deliberative perspective, the moral presumption in favor of humanitarian interventions, relevant practical considerations, and Kant’s apparently inflexible opposition to any forcible intervention in the governance or constitution of another state. The critical questions then are: (1) Does a government’s responsibility to its citizens prohibit intervention primarily for the sake of citizens of other countries? (2) Does the case for humanitarian intervention depend on illegitimate ideas about the right to punish or forfeiture of the right to govern? (3) Does forceful intervention in the governance of another state necessarily violate the rights of the citizens of that state? At issue are relations among ethics, law, and international relations. The chapter concludes that (1) Kant’s ethics rightly indicates that there is a presumption in favor of humanitarian interventions in some cases, (2) he wisely points to grounds for caution, avoiding punitive motives, and respecting the reasonable will of the citizens in other states, but (3) in the arguments reviewed here Kant did not provide adequate reasons for an absolute prohibition of humanitarian interventions in all cases.Less

Introduction: Spectrum of Statuses

Deborah Kamen

in Status in Classical Athens

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, namely to provide a thick description of Athenian status, ultimately broaching larger questions about the relationship between Athenian ... More

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, namely to provide a thick description of Athenian status, ultimately broaching larger questions about the relationship between Athenian citizenship and civic ideology. “Civic ideology” here refers to the conception that all Athenian citizens—and only Athenian citizens—were autochthonous (that is, descended from ancestors “born from the earth” of Attica) and engaged in the political and military life of the city. This survey of statuses will demonstrate, among other things, that Athenian democracy was both more closed and more open than civic ideology might lead us to think: on the one hand, only some citizen males exercised full citizen rights; on the other, even noncitizens and naturalized citizens were, to varying degrees, partial shareholders in the Athenian polis.Less

The Politics of the Internet I: Computer Networks, Civil Society, and the State

Manuel Castells

in The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society

This chapter examines the interaction between the Internet and processes of socio-political conflict, representation, and management by focusing on four distinct, though related, areas in which this ... More

This chapter examines the interaction between the Internet and processes of socio-political conflict, representation, and management by focusing on four distinct, though related, areas in which this interaction takes place. These areas include the new dynamics of social movements, the computer networking of local communities and their relevance for citizen participation, the uses of the Internet in the practice of informal politics, and the emergence of ‘noopolitik’ and cyberwarfare on the geopolitical stage. It explains that the Internet offers extraordinary potential for the expression of citizen rights, and for the communication of human values. The Internet cannot substitute for social change or political reform; however, it does contribute to democratization.Less

From Nature to Nation: French Revolutionary Rights

Dan Edelstein

in On the Spirit of Rights

When the French themselves began drafting their own Declaration, they clearly had American models in mind: two-thirds of the final French articles have antecedents in American texts. But this family ... More

When the French themselves began drafting their own Declaration, they clearly had American models in mind: two-thirds of the final French articles have antecedents in American texts. But this family resemblance is also misleading. The French did not have the same judicial tradition to draw on. Instead, they adhered to the continental natural law tradition and sought the perfection of civil law on the basis of natural law. Rights, in this perspective, did not always trump laws. Critics who fault the 1789 Declaration for succumbing to légicentrisme are thus misguided. The French concern with la loi is not a legacy of Louisquatorzian centralization, but rather of a venerable, pan-European discipline of natural law. But the French did have their own constitutional legacy, which would come into conflict with this doctrine of social naturalism. Absent from the Declaration itself, the demand for protections of national rights would come to dominate political discourse after 1789. As France lurched from crisis to crisis, these collective rights came to be seen as more critical than individual ones. Those who violated these rights became the worst kind of enemy: l’ennemi du peuple, who would be the target of violent legislation during the Terror.Less

Rights

Alex Mold

in Making the patient-consumer: Patient organisations and health consumerism in Britain

The aim of this chapter is to explore the broader meaning and application of rights talk in connection with health from the 1970s to the early 1990s. It begins by considering the various ways in ... More

The aim of this chapter is to explore the broader meaning and application of rights talk in connection with health from the 1970s to the early 1990s. It begins by considering the various ways in which the language of rights was used in the context of health. The chapter then moves on to consider the application of such language, through attempts to introduce a Rights of Patients Bill. A selection of patient’s rights guides and charters are also analysed, and the chapter suggests that it was unclear whether these were addressed to the individual patient, or all patients. A more collective understanding of patients’ rights was exhibited by organisations such as the Community Rights Project, which aimed to enhance democracy and accountability within the NHS through the language of rights. The establishment of Department of Health’s The Patient’s Charter in 1991, however, undermined such collective conceptualisations of rights. Addressed to the individual patient rather than all patients, The Patient’s Charter was indicative not only of an individualised approach to patients’ rights, but of a wider shift in the conceptualisation of the patient as consumer and who could speak for this figure.Less

The National Citizens’ Rights Association

Carolyn L. Karcher

in A Refugee from His Race: Albion W. Tourgée and His Fight against White Supremacy

Chapter 4 examines the National Citizens’ Rights Association (NCRA), the interracial civil rights organization Tourgée founded in October 1891 to agitate for equal citizenship. After detailing ... More

Chapter 4 examines the National Citizens’ Rights Association (NCRA), the interracial civil rights organization Tourgée founded in October 1891 to agitate for equal citizenship. After detailing African American newspaper editors’ role in publicizing the NCRA, the chapter focuses on the organization’s three main membership groups: black Southerners, black Northerners, and white Northerners. Their letters to Tourgée show how members enlisted new recruits, used Tourgée as a secret conduit for reporting local atrocities, and expressed frustration with his refusal to move beyond recruitment to a concrete plan of action. In turn, Tourgée’s replies provide insight into the obstacles that prevented the NCRA from fulfilling its ambitious goals: his deficiencies as an organizer, his lack of access to capital, the repression that limited black Southerners’ activities, the inadequate enrollment of black Northerners, and the racial separatism that deterred whites and blacks from socializing together.Less

The “Bystander”

Carolyn L. Karcher

in A Refugee from His Race: Albion W. Tourgée and His Fight against White Supremacy

Chapter 3 surveys Tourgée’s “Bystander” column in the Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, showing how it fostered a national dialogue about the race question by incorporating long extracts from the private ... More

Chapter 3 surveys Tourgée’s “Bystander” column in the Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, showing how it fostered a national dialogue about the race question by incorporating long extracts from the private letters and public statements of African Americans and whites representing different political opinions and regional identities. The chapter also highlights some of the issues Tourgée addressed in the column: the “lawless violence” directed against African Americans, the horrors of the Southern prison system, the fallacies of scientific racism, the accusations of “ingratitude” whites frequently levelled against African Americans, the Republican party’s abandonment of African Americans, the founding of the National Citizens’ Rights Association through which Tourgée hoped to influence the party, and economic policy. In addition, the chapter explores Tourgée’s stormy relationship with the Inter Ocean’s editor, William Penn Nixon, and with the Republican party bosses who sought to censor and ultimately to abolish the “Bystander” column.Less

Citizenship I: membership, privilege, and place

Lynn Dobson

in Supranational Citizenship

Chapter 1 provides a working definition of the concept of citizenship, prior to its contested conceptions, and a selective critical overview of some current approaches to its theory. Citizenship ... More

Chapter 1 provides a working definition of the concept of citizenship, prior to its contested conceptions, and a selective critical overview of some current approaches to its theory. Citizenship denotes the relationship between an individual and a political locus, a relationship specifiable in three domains: reciprocal obligation, inter-subjective belonging, and action on matters of common concern. Our standard thinking about citizenship has assumed a nation-state, and has difficulties in conceptualising a non-national citizenship. Furthermore, many understandings of citizenship see it as privilege-conferring, a view to be rejected here. The chapter discusses the enduring influence of Marshall within this tradition of thinking about citizenship, and claims that the two assumptions on which his conception was predicated – that citizenship is the qualifying condition for entry into systems of rights, and that the only political community guaranteeing rights is the state – no longer hold. Conceptions of citizenship now need to notice the development of international human rights regimes, including the extension of rights to non-citizens.Less

Conclusion

M. Anne Brown

in Human Rights and the Borders of Suffering: The Promotion of Human Rights in International Politics

This book has explored the promotion of human rights practices and approaches in international life. It has argued for a shift in approach—a greater preparedness to reflect on some of the categories ... More

This book has explored the promotion of human rights practices and approaches in international life. It has argued for a shift in approach—a greater preparedness to reflect on some of the categories by which we construct our sense of human rights and some acknowledgment of the limits of our understanding, or even of our ignorance, of the complex life to which these categories, particularly that of the human, refer. This way of conceptualising human rights has provided a remarkably powerful framework for the characterisation of both the individual and political community and for the identification of abuse. Moreover, it has to a significant extent shaped the terms in which general debate over human rights in international politics has been repeatedly cast, particularly the polarity of universalism and relativism, of the ‘rights of man’ and the citizen's rights, and of political and economic (or social or cultural) rights. Human rights practices are not part of a progression to perfection, or its approximation, but a way of working with the systemic generation of suffering.Less

The Truth as Defence to Contempt *

A.G. Noorani

in CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS AND CITIZENS' RIGHTS: An Omnibus Comprising Constitutional Questions in India and Citizens' Rights, Judges and State Accountability

This chapter focuses on the Supreme Court's arbitrary use of its contempt power as shown in its judgment on the case of contempt against Arundhati Roy. In the last decade and a half, the Supreme ... More

This chapter focuses on the Supreme Court's arbitrary use of its contempt power as shown in its judgment on the case of contempt against Arundhati Roy. In the last decade and a half, the Supreme Court has shown a touchiness that is unbecoming in the highest court in the land, a selectivity in the application of the law, a total indifference to the limits of its power and, with it, a cavalier disregard for the citizen's rights when charged with contempt. This is most unfortunate in a court which the Constitution not only empowers and enjoins to enforce the fundamental rights, but makes this right of the citizen to move the court itself a fundamental right (Article 32).Less

The Age of Emancipation and Assimilation: Liberalism and Its Heritage⋆

in From Vienna to Chicago and Back: Essays on Intellectual History and Political Thought in Europe and America

This chapter describes the age of emancipation and assimilation. It specifically addresses the questions of Jewish assimilation in the Hungarian half of the Dual Monarchy. The Fundamental Law on the ... More

This chapter describes the age of emancipation and assimilation. It specifically addresses the questions of Jewish assimilation in the Hungarian half of the Dual Monarchy. The Fundamental Law on the General Rights of the Citizens originated in an initiative by the Parliament in Vienna. The great significance of Adolf Jellinek is also considered. Higher education and conversion, or at least of leaving the Jewish community, were products of emancipation and assimilation. Moreover, the Staatsgrundgesetz on the General Rights of Citizens of 1867 is explained. The fundamental laws of the 1867 constitution, with the Staatsgrundgesetz on the General Rights of Citizens in the center, remained for the Jews of Austria the most precious piece of Austria's legislation protecting the rights of the Jewish Citizens. The present Austrian constitution had taken over the principles of the Constitution of the Monarchy of 1867.Less

Postwar Campaigns for Citizens’ Rights

Tracy E. K’Meyer

in Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South: Louisville, Kentucky, 1945-1980

This chapter discusses the story of the Interracial Hospital Movement (IHM) which contains many of the elements characteristic of the early civil rights movement in postwar Louisville. It provides ... More

This chapter discusses the story of the Interracial Hospital Movement (IHM) which contains many of the elements characteristic of the early civil rights movement in postwar Louisville. It provides that as in the IHM, a variety of black, white, and biracial worker, religious, youth, and civic organizations came together in ad hoc interracial coalitions to target specific problems, developing a tradition in the city of white and black cooperation in equal rights campaigns. It notes that in this period, Louisville activists argued that African Americans as citizens had the right to equal access to tax-supported jobs and facilities, identifying them as two linked manifestations of government-enforced Jim Crow. It emphasizes that piecemeal success in these areas laid the groundwork for the city's progressive self-image as a leader for the South in race relations, an image that played a significant role in struggles throughout the movement era.Less

Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act: Urgency of Review 1

A.G. Noorani and South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre

in Challenges to Civil Rights Guarantees in India

Since Maneka Gandhi, the Supreme Court of India has been consistent in its argument that the procedure prescribed by law must be fair and reasonable. In turn, the law must conform to the other ... More

Since Maneka Gandhi, the Supreme Court of India has been consistent in its argument that the procedure prescribed by law must be fair and reasonable. In turn, the law must conform to the other fundamental rights, especially those embodied in Article 19(1) of the Constitution concerning all the aspects of civil liberties. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958 (AFSPA) is currently under review, with the goal of striking a fair balance between citizens' rights and public order. That the Supreme Court has upheld the AFSPA's constitutional validity illustrates its insensitivity to citizens' rights in cases where ‘national security’ is involved. In particular, Section 4 of the AFSPA violates Article 21 of the Constitution and must be amended. It is also necessary to establish an independent appellate body to address complaints against the armed forces or the police when they operate under the AFSPA.Less