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Constitutionalising a right makes it immune to the possibility of (routine) democratic revision. So, constitutional rights that set certain substantive values beyond the reach of routine political revision have the effect of pre-empting decisions that might otherwise be arrived at through democratic procedures. To the extent that environmental rights can be taken to embody substantive value commitments, they would appear to be vulnerable to the criticism that the constitutional entrenchment of them is undemocratic. Certain procedural rights, however, are necessary for the very functioning of democracy as such. Can procedural environmental rights be justified on this ground? And what about the substantive right to an adequate environment? Argues that both kinds of environmental rights, in common with some existing and far less controversial rights, can in fact be justified on the very grounds that democracy itself is justified.

This chapter contrasts his consequentialist account of democratic rights with prominent nonconsequentialist accounts, including those of Rawls, Habermas, Barry, and Waldron. He explains why majority rule itself requires a consequentialist rationale. To illustrate that the rationale for democratic rights is consequentialist, the chapter proposes an alternative to democratic rights, election by deliberative poll, that would be an improvement under the main principle, were it not for the potential for abuse. Democratic rights are a solution to a CAP. To be endorsed by the main principle, democratic rights must equitably promote the life prospects of all compliers and nonresponsible noncompliers. The chapter argues that group rights or cultural rights are not fundamental rights, but rather rights that are instrumental to protecting the individual rights of members of minorities against majorities. The chapter shows that the main principle can explain why human rights, including democratic rights, should be inalienable. This is a puzzle on many nonconsequentialist views. The chapter describes one kind of problem that no form of government, not even democracy, is very good at solving, the time lag problem. Finally, the chapter discusses the inappropriateness of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning campaign finance reform laws on free speech grounds.

In this chapter, Talbott considers the Hobbesian social contract defense of autocracy as necessary to solve its citizens’ collective action problems. He argues that human beings are able to form stable rights-respecting democracies that solve their collective action problems, because while human beings are not angels (who always act from the moral standpoint), neither are they devils (who never act from the moral standpoint). He reviews Sen’s research on famines and psychological research on the ultimatum game and related games to show that most people are willing to incur at least small costs to promote fairness. Therefore, rights-respecting democracies (where rights are enforced by an independent judiciary) are able to solve the reliable feedback problem and the appropriate responsiveness problem to become more just over time. They are self-improving, self-regulating systems. Examples of movements of non-violent resistance (e.g., Gandhi and King) illustrate the process. The chapter concludes with a complete list of the basic human rights.

This chapter examines what it is about religion that tends to conflict with democratic rights. It considers various studies of the relationship between religion and other anti-democratic sentiments, especially prejudice. The evidence, if anything, is over-abundant and points in different directions. But certain relationships emerge clearly, especially between prejudice and a particular cognitive style referred to as ‘authority-mindedness’. This cognitive style is most apparent in religious fundamentalists, while fundamentalism in turn has been closely associated with prejudice and other anti-democratic attitudes, including ‘right-wing authoritarianism’. The chapter also shows the prevalence of the anti-democratic aspects of religion and how this can be overcome by education.

This chapter details Marshall's role as British officials and Africans began crafting a rule of law to guide Kenya's future. As an American, Marshall might seem like an intruder in a conversation, in essence, between British ruler and subject. But his presence was a marker of an era. His nation had thrown off British rule, an example that inspired the new generation. As rights became a central issue, Marshall found himself front and center. He was tasked with drafting a bill of rights. This was not a neat and tidy task, confined to the pristine world of legal analysis. And the document would not inscribe rights that would last forever. Instead, it was bricks-and-mortar work, the laying of a political foundation. The Bill of Rights was most importantly a commitment on the part of the parties to each other, a commitment to politics. To craft rights was to help build a nation.

This chapter discusses a type of bill of rights that draws on a political conception of human rights according to which the enumerated rights serve as a basis for enacting specific legislation. The proposed human rights regime is one in which a statutory bill of rights is used institutionally, not to service judicial review, but to provide the terms of reference for a variety of political mechanisms for agendizing, prioritizing, and developing a polity's human rights commitments within the mainstream democratic process. This chapter addresses the problem of how to arrive at a conception of human rights that is not tied to human rights law. It argues that human rights are best understood as a moral concept with a social, economic, and political focus, whose official articulation should be democratic and hence legislative. This involves identifying key human rights values together with those political and social institutions and practices essential for their effective realization, the prioritization and coordination of which is a matter for ongoing political debate and decision-making.

This chapter analyses how the role of the UN Security Council in the promotion and protection of human rights developed since 1945: an organ not endowed with any specific powers in the field of human rights became the ‘centre-piece of the human rights protection system’ of the international community. It describes the place of the Security Council in the framework of the UN human rights institutions, and how the Council came to regard human rights violations as a threat to international peace, making it possible for the Council to take action against such violations with measures provided for in Chapter VII of the UN Charter. It identifies three human rights which have attracted most of the Council's attention: the right of peoples to self-determination, the right to democratic governance, and the fundamental rights (arising under international human rights law and international humanitarian law) of civilian populations and minorities during war and internal conflict.

This chapter discusses the lack of true democracy in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan in order to set the stage for a presentation of the study's findings. In the mid-1980s the leadership in the republics of Central Asia was either quiescent in the face of looming changes within the Soviet Union or loyal to the central Soviet leadership and supportive of the Soviet federation's preservation. Ultimately, however, Central Asian governments backed democratization, and the leaders of these republics openly renounced their communist beliefs and affiliations. Western international organizations then launched development, democracy promotion, and security-related projects in these states. Although there were legitimate concerns about these republics' susceptibility to political instability and economic crises, there was also hope that these countries would undergo quick political reform, marketization, and transformation into liberal democratic states. But none of the Central Asian states has met these expectations. Today, Central Asian regimes sit along a continuum of autocracy rather than democracy, their power and authority firmly concentrated in the presidential office and maintained through a combination of repression, co-option, and political constraints on societal institutions.

This concluding chapter assesses the questions with which the book's narrative starts. It analyzes the complex political, legal, and social factors that influenced the way in which early twentieth-century national racial justice organizing developed as it did and assesses the balance between private institution building and demands for full citizenship inclusion that characterized activism during the period, suggesting that activists' work in the intersections of the public/private divide presents an area of legal civil rights history deserving far greater attention. Finally, the conclusion situates the book's narrative within the broader historiography of civil rights activism in the United States.

This chapter examines the sources of T. Thomas Fortune's vision for founding a long-term national organization to lead the struggle for racial justice on a wide range of fronts. It looks at the legal principles Fortune learned from the jurisprudence of John Mercer Langston, founding dean of Howard Law School, which Fortune attended. It explores Fortune's political ideology, which was motivated by the principles of democratic socialism, and analyzes his many journalistic commentaries on civil rights matters topical at the time in order to trace the origins of Fortune's ideas for the National Afro-American League's founding issue platform.

With the prestige of its role in the Resistance, the PCF might have briefly felt close to state power. But the PCA’s relationship to the state was profoundly different. For the PCA, the war’s end raised the prospect of again prioritising the anti-colonial struggle, whose marginalisation had alienated nationalists. The departure of French Communists for France facilitated the PCA’s autonomy, which increased as the PCF became increasingly concerned with Cold War politics. In 1945 the PCA wrongly blamed Algerian nationalist provocations for the Sétif massacre in which French troops and European settlers killed many thousands of Muslims. But from 1946 the PCA pursued an aggressive policy of indigenisation that significantly increased Algerian membership while European membership declined. As prospects for electoral reform proved barren, Communists and nationalists faced the same dilemma: how to fight against colonialism and for democratic rights from within an increasingly authoritarian system. The PCA pursued a multi-pronged campaign for democratic rights. This vision reflected a dual notion − freedom from repression and freedom to develop.

This concluding chapter looks at Patterson's last years. As Patterson's lifespan wound down, it became evident that despite his association with a reviled organization, it was difficult to isolate him altogether, not only because of his track record, which inspired admiration, but also because many African Americans were not necessarily prone to bow to those who only recently had declared their unwavering support for Jim Crow. Thus, a man who made no secret of his desire for a revolutionary transformation of the United States—a nation where conservatism was ingrained—continued to win adherents even as his debilities mounted and his life was expiring. On March 5, 1980, at the age of eighty-nine, Patterson died at Union Hospital in the Bronx. Ultimately, Patterson left behind memories of a life of struggle shaped by an all-pervading hatred of Jim Crow and imperialism; more than that, he saw the path to socialism as paved by the struggle for democratic rights.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of William L. Patterson's ultimate vision, his socialist project. Patterson was a self-proclaimed revolutionary who sought to abolish capitalism and install socialism in a step-by-step process that involved the continuous struggle for expansion of democratic rights. As he saw things, capitalism as it evolved in the United States had been grounded in a racist slavery and Jim Crow and in order for justice to arrive for the beleaguered Negro, this system had to be extirpated root and branch. The chapter then argues that the nation might be better off today if Patterson's path of amity toward Moscow had been followed. Though Patterson was never accused of espionage, U.S. patriots need to acknowledge that just as Nelson Mandela's African National Congress owed no allegiance to an illegitimate apartheid state and was justified in collaborating with Moscow, Jim Crow was similarly illegitimate and certainly required a like amount of obeisance.