Views of Human Rights

In wizard melody or another, human rights has become a central hold of world discourse, and would command our attention for that reason if no other.

In "Two Concepts of Self-Determination" (pp. 25-44), Iris Young is concerned not directly with the rights of persons, but with those of communities -- about specifically, the rights of so-cal direct indigenous communities (such as Native American Indians on reservations) to self-rule. The thrust of her literary argument, however, is much broader, applying potentially not only to the familiar understanding of self-rule as applied to national kingdoms, but to the meaning of individual rights and emancipation as well. Young is quite an aware of these broader implications, but it is helpful to start with the specific example she uses.

In the late 1990s, the Skull vale Band of Goshute Indians, in Utah, asserted that its communal right of self-determination allowed it to accept payment in turn for permitting a nuclear-waste store site on Goshute terra firma (pp. 41-42). At once, two quite reasonable propositions of rights were placed in conflict: that of the Goshutes to use their land in their own best interest, and that of their Utah neighbors not to be subjected to the unpredictable hazards of nearby nuclear-waste storage.

In addressing this problem, Young argues in center of attention that the traditional understanding of self-determination, as originally applied to nation-states, is an atomistic

Since that Arcadian time, Chiapas has been more incorporate into the larger economy; capital is now the limiting gene of production, so those with resources are motivated to obtain capital sort of than spread their wealth around. As a result, argues Collier, social and sparing inequalities have increased. Moreover, political and economic pressures in Mexico have led the state to take a larger -- and largely repressive -- role in Chiapas. With well-publicized repression has come the attention of Mexican and supranational human-rights agencies.

The outlook thus seems dismal. However, as An-Na'im notes, "there are indications of countertrends in popular resistance and local activism within civil high society supported by some international actors and factors" (p.

99). Essentially, his essay is an argument that protection of human rights must come ultimately and to begin with out of the political process rather than through efficacious mechanisms as such. In Africa as elsewhere, "the courts follow the election returns," or more broadly the development and alignment of political forces.

Sarat, A. & Kearns, T. R. (editors) (2001). world Rights: Concepts, Contests, Contingencies, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

If any one proposition binds together the essays considered above, it is the haziness of boundaries. Neither individual human rights nor collective rights of self-determination can in the real world be taken as defined in terms of impenetrable spheres within which individual (or group) freedom of action is absolute. The pure sovereign state is as fictive as the pure sovereign individual; in practice we all intrude on one another's spheres all the time. The question for the law -- whether put to formal adjudication in a courtroom or placed into a political arena -- is how to manage the endless shadings where one person's or community's most vital concerns (that is to say, rights) blur into another's.

In "The Legal Protection of sympathetic R
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