The right to private property is among the most fundamental in liberal theory. For many liberals the idea of the state is grounded in its role as a protector of private property. If the liberal state is justified by its ability to protect property, the modern welfare state is often justified by its ability to meet needs. According to a view commonly referred to as “welfarism,” the very fact that needs exist implies there is a moral obligation to meet (...) them. In this Article I appeal to Rawlsian contractualist justification, including the “criterion of reciprocity,” in developing a third manner of thinking about the relationship between property and welfare. I argue that welfare rights are necessary conditions for justifying a role for the state in enforcing the “right to exclude,” a fundamental element of private ownership. My Article thus aims to use Rawls’ account of justification, outlined in his later works, to theorize the notion of property-owning democracy from Theory of Justice. (shrink)

Cranston argued that scarcity makes universal welfare rights impossible. After showing that this argument cannot be avoided by denying scarcity, I consider four challenges to the argument which accept the possibility of conflicts between the duties implied by rights. The first denies the agglomeration principle; the second embraces conflicts of duties; the third affirms the violability of all rights-based duties; and the fourth denies that duties to compensate are overriding. I argue that all four challenges to (...) the scarcity argument are unsuccessful. I then discuss Eddy’s recent challenge, which makes welfare rights context dependent, but I argue that this also fails because it makes rights unknowable. I conclude that the scarcity argument, restated in the light of the discussion, shows that universal welfare rights, as ordinarily understood, are impossible and I explain the philosophical and practical significance of this conclusion. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of recent attempts, by George Sher and others to justify compensation to be paid to descendants of deceased victims of past wrongs. This recent attempt is important as it endeavours to avoid some well-known critiques of previous attempts, such as the non-identity problem. Furthermore, this new attempt is grounded in individual rights, without invoking a more controversial collectivist assumption. The first step in this critique is to differentiate between compensation and restitution. Once (...) this important distinction is clear, an examination of several factors follows: the importance of the passage of time vis-à-vis claims for compensation and/or restitution, the responsibility of the would be payers, the responsibility of the descendants of the victims, the welfare level of the descendants of the victims, information-related issues, and several additional factors. The conclusion is that once we take into account the distinction between compensation and restitution, and the additional factors mentioned, the case for compensation and/or restitution under the ‘continuing injustice argument’, is highly limited. (shrink)

Sen’s “The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal” was meant to crystallize his fundamental criticism against the welfaristic basis of welfare economics in general, and social choice theory in particular. This paper vindicates Sen’s criticism, arguing that its logical relevance is not lost in light of recent criticisms against his method of articulating individual rights in terms of a person’s decisive power in social choice. We show that some recent proposals that Sen’s articulation failed to capture a strong libertarian (...) tradition of free contract and that an appropriate formulation of this tradition wipes off the Sen impossibility cannot be sustained. We then show that the game form articulation of rights casts serious doubts on the Sen articulation of liberty, but the Sen impossibility strenuously comes back in the context of realizing conferred game form rights as well as in the context of initial conferment of game form rights. (shrink)

Philosophical defenses of parents’ rights typically appeal to the interests of parents, the interests of children, or some combination of these. Here I propose that at least in the case of biological, non-adoptive parents, these rights have a different normative basis: namely, these rights should be accorded to biological parents because of the compensatory duties such parents owe their children by virtue of having brought them into existence. Inspried by Seana Shiffrin, I argue that procreation inevitably encumbers (...) the wills of children in otherwise morally objectionable ways. Such subjection generates duties to compensate children, even if the child’s life is on balance a benefit to her. The right to procreate is thus conditioned on prospective parent’s willingness to compensate for the harms of procreation. And because parents bear such compensatory duties, they must be accorded permissions (i.e., rights) to fulfill these duties. These rights include familiar exclusionary rights to promote children’s welfare, etc. Moreover, because subjecting children to harms or the risks thereof violates their autonomy, parental duties (and rights) include the provision of education and other goods that enable their subsequent autonomy as adults. Grounding parental rights in compensatory procreative duties avoids problems associated with appeals to the interests of children (e.g., that these interests do not seem to generate exclusive parental rights) or to the interests of parents (e.g., that these interests do not appear strong enough to permit the creation of a new, vulnerable human individual). (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Vance Conception of Economic and Social Rights Justifying Economic and Social Rights Implementing Economic and Social Rights The Widespread Acceptance of Economic and Social Rights Note References.

Rights to compensation are much invoked and much disputed in recent liberal debates. The disputes are generally about supposed fundamental rights to compensation, whose recognition and legal enactment would transform some lives. For example, special treatment in education or employment are claimed as compensation for past denials of equal opportunity; special consideration for Third World countries in aid and trade terms is claimed as compensation for the injustices of the colonial past. We can make (...) ready sense of the idea of legal rights to compensation. Legal rights to compensation guarantee recompense for damage suffered. The damage for which compensation is given may or may not be produced by wrongdoing; it may also be negligent or accidental or due to natural causes. In law, compensation is not always contingent upon the victim having suffered injury as well as harm, nor upon saddling a wrong-doer with the costs of compensation. Insurance policies standardly cover damage due to accident and neglect. Legal rights to compensation may provide for payments to victims of violent crime, to those whose property is requisitioned or damaged, to victims of libel or malpractice, and even to victims of natural disasters such as floods or earthquakes. Legal rights to compensation are a standard way of dealing with the predicament of those who become victims, whether of others' action, of their own negligence, or of natural catastrophe. None of this shows that there are fundamental rights to compensation. Legal rights to compensation may lack moral grounding: and if they are morally grounded, they may rest not on fundamental rights to compensation, but on background positions in which rights are derivative or inessential. (shrink)

The fact that welfare rights – rights to food, shelter and medical care – will conflict with one another is often taken to be good reason to exclude welfare rights from the catalogue of genuine rights. Rather than respond to this objection by pointing out that all rights conflict, welfare rights proponents need to take the conflicts objection seriously. The existence of potentially conflicting and more weighty normative considerations counts against a (...) claim’s status as a genuine right. To think otherwise would be to threaten the peremptory force – and hence the analytical integrity – of rights. The conflicts objection is made more pressing once we have conceded that welfare rights give people entitlements to what are potentially scarce goods. I argue that welfare rights can survive the conflicts objection if, and only if, we take scarcity into account in the framing of a given welfare right. (shrink)

In Globalization and Global Justice, Nicole Hassoun presents a new andfundamental challenge to libertarian political thought. Her LegitimacyArgument tries to show that natural rights libertarians are committed bytheir own principles to a requirement that their states recognize and meetthe positive welfare rights of certain merely potentially autonomous persons.Unfortunately, this argument suffers from two flaws. Hassoun needs to show,but has not shown, that the libertarian state would have to infringe any ofthe negative rights of the merely potentially (...) autonomous in such a way asto require consent from them. Moreover, the libertarians could arrange theirinstitutions, justifiably by their own lights, so as to expel all indigent, merelypotentially autonomous persons from their territory. This second solution isintuitively unpalatable, but may be no more morally problematic than thebasic natural rights libertarian view itself. (shrink)

Protecting women and children is one of the core values of the Islamic legal tradition. In Muslim countries religious, constitutional, and legal frameworks obligate the state to take special measures to provide protection to women and children within families and in society. However, despite such provisions, post-divorce maintenance rights are not granted to women in Pakistan and Iran. Family law enacted in Pakistan and Iran still differs in form and substance from what has been mentioned in the primary sources (...) of Islamic law and from the previous articulations of early Islamic law scholars. Moreover, patriarchal notions of male authority are still sustained through law and judicial interpretations when it comes to the question of giving post-divorce maintenance to women. As a result in the absence of a welfare system divorced women are left in a vulnerable situation. Although in Iran, some financial compensation under the concept of Ujrat ul Misl is given to divorced women, but it remains unclear whether the right to Mata’at-ul-Talaq has been recognised under the family law. In Pakistan the law does not include any provision for giving women Ujrat ul Misl and Mata’at- ul -Talaq. Moreover in the absence of a welfare system, divorced Muslim women in both countries are left in a vulnerable situation. This article engages with plural normative sources and contemporary notions of human rights to make the case for family law reform and for awarding post-divorce maintenance rights to Muslim women in Pakistan and Iran. (shrink)

The Kantian moral foundations of Nozickian libertarianism suggest that the claim that self‐ownership grounds only negative rights to property should be rejected. The moral foundations of Nozick's libertarianism better support basing property rights on moral desert. It is neither incoherent nor implausible to say that need can be a basis for desert. By implication, the libertarian contention that persons ought to be respected as persons living self‐shaping lives is inconsistent with the libertarian refusal to accept that claims of (...) need can sometimes outweigh claims to property. (shrink)

Populists in the EU often call for restrictions on EU immigrants’ access to welfare rights. These calls are often demagogic and parochial. This paper aims to show what exactly is both distinct and problematic with these populist calls from a normative point of view while not necessarily reducible to demagogy and parochialism. The overall aim of the paper is not to argue that all populists call for such restrictions nor to claim that all calls for such restrictions are (...) populist. The purpose of the paper is rather humble. It only aims to show that populist calls for restrictions on EU immigrants’ access to welfare rights are characterised by two normatively problematic arguments that target two different subsets of the citizenry: what I dub for the purpose of this paper the moralists and the immoralists. It is the way populists address these two subsets of the citizenry, as well as the fact that they could simultaneously appeal to the concerns of both groups, that makes populist approaches to welfare rights both conceptually distinct to other approaches as well as potentially politically appealing to a more diverse population of voters. (shrink)

Defenders of current restrictions on EU immigrants’ access to welfare rights in host member states often invoke a principle of reciprocity among member states to justify these policies. The argument is that membership of a system of social cooperation triggers duties of reciprocity characteristic of welfare rights. Newly arriving EU immigrants who look for work do not meet the relevant criteria of membership, the argument goes, because they have not yet contributed enough to qualify as members (...) on the grounds of reciprocity. Therefore, current restrictions on their access to welfare rights are justified. In this article, I challenge this argument by showing how restrictions on EU immigrants’ access to welfare rights are inconsistent with duties of international reciprocity. There are different variations of this challenge, but my focus here will be on one that uses a veil of ignorance device to support this claim. What matters from a perspective concerned with international reciprocity, I will argue, is what kind of welfare policy EU member states would choose were they not to know whether those receiving EU migrants were net contributors or net beneficiaries to the relevant scheme of international cooperation made possible by the four freedoms, and freedom of movement in particular. I argue that framing the requirement of reciprocity in this way provides a more comprehensive understanding of what should count as an ‘unreasonable burden’ on the welfare systems of host member states. The paper also examines alternative accounts of ‘unreasonable burdens’. It shows when and how the current institutional structure of the EU could take steps to deal with such burdens by preventing member states from gaming a comprehensive system of welfare rights protections across member states and by recognising the achievements of those member states that best serve them. (shrink)

This paper deals with three topics: types of rights, the development of the terminology of rights, and the question of the primacy of welfare rights. Because these topics are interrelated, my exposition does not observe rigid boundaries among them. There is no pretence at all that any of these subjects is fully covered here; nor is it proposed, except for one writer, to touch upon the contemporary literature on rights, as noteworthy as some of that (...) literature is. In order to gain entrance into the field, on which the writing has grown to massive proportions, I shall begin with an interesting historical phenomenon, some of whose philosophical import I want to explore. I should say at the outset, however, that the general motivation of this paper is the problem of the significance of the language of “rights.” Does it really make a difference, for instance, to speak of the “rights of man” rather than the “common duties of humanity”? Does the term “rights” add anything of special significance or is its only significance rhetorical and ideological? Can we dispense with the language of rights and still say everything we need to say about our moral relations? I confess to a moderate skepticism about the necessity of the language of rights in the last analysis. At any rate, this paper is intended as a contribution, however small, to this problem. The historical phenomenon with which I am going to begin will enable us to bring into focus the issue of the meaning of “rights.”. (shrink)

In a recent line of cases, senior judges in the UK have been called upon to adjudicate in complaints over the failure of health and local authorities to meet the welfare needs of citizens. Local authorities claimed that the disputes had been precipitated by a lack of resources allocated by central government to meet local demand. This article examines the role of the courts in resolving a fundamental tension between central government policy of financial cost-cutting on the one hand (...) and welfarist principles embodied in legislation for the delivery of public services on the other. Questions are raised about the relevance and appropriateness of rights-based adjudication in welfare needs contexts and about the reluctance of courts to intervene in the resolution of resource allocation disputes even where fundamental rights, particularly in areas such as health, community care, and education where notions of rights are inextricably bound up with use of financial resources. These key cases have arisen prior to the implementation of the Human Rights Act 1998. Where relevant, the likely impact of the Act on welfare needs disputes is considered. (shrink)

Kant is probably one of the most misunderstood philosophers in the history of Western thought. Some of the most well-known and pervasive objections to Kant’s practical philosophy often rest on considerable misunderstandings of his central theses or a poor and superficial reading of his work. A common misconception is that in Kant’s practical philosophy there is no place or role for human happiness. In Happiness in Kant’s Practical Philosophy: Morality, Indirect Duties, and Welfare Rights, Alice Pinheiro Walla dispels (...) this misunderstanding by elucidating Kant’s conception of happiness (understood in broadly hedonist terms) and showing that, for Kant, the pursuit of happiness plays an important role in our personal and collective lives. This means that, far from endorsing an ascetic ideal of the moral agent, as it is commonly thought, Kant’s system embraces an ideal of the human life in which there is significant space, and even a duty, to pursue pleasurable endeavours. Somehow surprisingly, in Pinheiro Walla’s reading, Kant’s ethics is arguably less demanding than standard interpretations of Aristotelian and Utilitarian ethical theories. (shrink)

In this essay I will try to develop a natural law justification of welfare rights. The justification I will undertake is from the perspective of Catholic natural law, that is, the strand of natural law that has been developed theoretically by Roman Catholic canonists, theologians, and philosophers since Aquinas, and affirmed by Catholic teachers as the basis for most moral obligations. Catholic natural law is, therefore, natural law as developed and understood by Catholics or others respecting Catholic traditions (...) of inquiry. It is not, however, primarily or exclusively natural law for Catholics, since the very idea of natural law includes the conviction that it is accessible in principle to anyone.Footnotes* I wish to thank the other contributors to this volume for their helpful comments on a presentation of an earlier draft of this essay. I am also grateful to John Finnis, Germain Grisez, James Murphy, Ellen Frankel Paul, and Michael Vertin for written comments on the earlier draft, which revealed many errors and suggested significant improvements. (shrink)

Contemporary social policy toward low-income women in the United States, as evidenced both by Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) and by the AFDC programme that preceded it, is in part an artefact of long-standing conceptions of the nature of citizenship. This view sees citizenship as resting primarily on civil and political rights, not on rights with respect to economic, social, and cultural matters. Drawing on scholarly literature on the development of international human rights regimes, (...) the feminist literature that analyses social policy both comparatively and in terms of US domestic policy, and literature regarding contemporary movements among low-income persons, this paper analyses the efforts of one organization, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), to challenge US policy via international human rights law and international enforcement mechanisms. We will suggest that, despite some of the flaws of the KWRU, their approach is a promising one for low-income women. In particular, we wish to suggest that a broader conception of citizenship that takes into account economic, cultural, and social rights is necessary to create a more equitable and democratic polity for women. (shrink)

If the U.S. Constitution is a liberal Constitution, liberal governments can have a constitutional obligation to secure positive benefits or welfare rights. The original constitutional text describes a government instrumental to the Preamble's abstract ends or goods. Constitutional rights can be reconciled to the text's instrumentalist logic by viewing them as functional to better conceptions of abstract ends among actors who would compensate for their fallibility. The Federalist confirms the instrumentalism of the constitutional text. Conservative writers who (...) treat negative liberties as constitutional ends err in several ways. They assume rational actors would establish a government for the sake of limiting it, and they ignore the positive nature of goods (life, liberty, property) that are the objects of negative liberties. They also fail to see that tax-supported protections for all positive goods, including the objects of negative liberties, must be justified by public purposes. (shrink)

Karl Friedrich Christian Krause’s concept of penal law, though little noticed in Germany, can be regarded as almost revolutionary for its time, as it assumes that public law is not only – negatively – intended to delimit and guarantee the citizens’ spheres of freedom. Rather, the law should also promote the welfare of the citizenry. As a result, Krause’s considerations of penal law do not focus on law enforcement alone, but just as much on the resocialization of both the (...) offender and the victim. In contrast to utilitarian positions, the perpetrator must not be instrumentalized for the benefit of society, e. g. for preventative purposes; rather, the offender has a subjective right to be rehabilitated. Correspondingly, the victim has a right to compensation on the part of the state inasmuch as the offender’s means prove insufficient. (shrink)

Scholars are divided over whether a victim's rights persist when an agent permissibly responds to an emergency. According to the prevailing view the moral force of rights is not extinguished by moral permissibility and the agent, therefore, has a duty to compensate the victim. According to another influential view permissibility does erase the moral force of rights and the agent, therefore, can only have a duty to compensate for reasons other than the fact that they committed a (...) rights transgression. I argue that liability does not follow even if we grant that the victim's rights persevere. A non-pecuniary remedy such as a formal apology provides an adequate way of vindicating the victim's rights and of recognizing the agent's causal role. Thus, the answer to the question of what remedy the permissible transgressor owes the victim does not provide us with an answer to the question of who should bear the burden. (shrink)

In the past quarter century C. B. MacPherson's reading of Locke has enjoyed a wide appeal. We are all by now familiar with Locke as the ardent proponent of possessive individualism, with its accompanying acquisitive tendencies and egoism. To be sure, MacPherson's interpretation has not gone unopposed. Of late it has been challenged in all its fundamentals by the scholarly and ingenious work of James Tully. Far from seeing Locke as providing the theoretical underpinnings for unbridled capitalism, Tully puts forward (...) the view that Locke was sympathetic to the possibility of radical redistributive measures. That is, that he was not in principle opposed to rights to welfare. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This exploratory study assessed links among children’s moral concern and their ideas about the rights and protection of companion, farm, wild animals and ecosystems. Sixty-one children responded to three interview questions that were coded as either anthropocentric or biocentric in orientation. Results revealed unique links among children’s moral concern and their ideas about the rights and protection of different types of animals and ecosystems. Biocentric moral concern was associated with two protection strategies: 1) advocacy to protect companion (...) animals and ecosystems, and 2) the need for peer support to help protect wild animals. Overall, results revealed the nuanced diversity of children’s moral concern and ideas about the rights and protection of all types of animals and ecosystems. Implications for moral education programs include a balanced approach to foster compassion, environmental awareness, and social justice among youth. (shrink)

People react negatively not only to injustices they personally endure but also to injustices that they observe as bystanders at work—and typically, people observe more injustices than they personally experience. It is therefore important to understand how organizations can restore observers’ perceptions of justice after an injustice has occurred. In our paper, we employ a policy capturing design to test and compare the restorative power of monetary compensation, procedure changes and apologies, alone and in combination, from the perspective of (...) third parties. We extend previous research on remedies by including different degrees of compensation and procedural changes, by comparing the effects of sincere versus insincere apologies and by including apologies from additional sources. The results indicate that monetary compensation, procedure changes, and sincere apologies all have a significant and positive effect on how observers perceive the restoration of justice. Insincere apologies, on the other hand, have no significant effect on restoration for third parties. Procedural changes were found to have the strongest remedial effects, a remedy rarely included in previous research. One interpretation of this finding could be that observers of injustice prefer solutions that are not short sighted: changing procedures avoids future injustices that could affect other people. We found that combinations of remedies, such that the presence of a second remedy strengthens the effect of the first remedy, are particularly effective. Our findings regarding interactions underline the importance of studying and administering remedies in conjunction with each other. (shrink)

Children are individuals, and they are owed rights as individuals. Here, I offer a defence of the child's right to bodily integrity against genital cutting and modification practices. The liberal commitment to the right to bodily integrity works with the harm principle as a liberty limiting commitment within a system that respects people's embodied moral personhood and their decisions about their lives and bodies. Like adults within a political system committed to the equal protection of individual rights, children (...) must have equal rights that transcend the differences between them. But, they are different to adults in important ways, both philosophically and empirically. I offer an account of the child's right to bodily integrity that recognises them as particular embodied individuals, and prioritises their welfare interest in having their bodily integrity respected. (shrink)

Given the fact that the prevalent political debates about the status and significance of liberty and welfare are almost polarised, this book defends both of them as essential to human dignity and well being. Amartya Sen's capability approach is the result of his constructive criticism of John Rawls' political liberalism. Though Jacques Maritain is often regarded as the forerunner of Rawls, he has not yet been discussed in relation to Sen's capability approach. Despite Maritain's pioneering contributions to human (...) class='Hi'>rights discourse in the twentieth century, his personalism only insufficiently reflects and explains the demands of welfare rights. In view of this shared deficit in liberal traditions, this book argues that Sen's human rights discourse, with its 'goal rights system,' persuasively integrates both liberty and welfare rights. In addition, it merges both human rights and human development discourses, consequently laying a solid foundation for a rights based approach to development"--Publisher's website. (shrink)

The spectacle of the relentless use and abuse of animals in various human enterprises led some human beings to formulate animal welfare policies and to offer philosophical arguments on the basis of which the humane treatment of animals could be defended rationally. According to the animal welfare concept, animals should be provided some comfort and freedom of movement in the period prior to the moment when they are killed. This concept emphasizes the physiological, psychological, and natural aspects of (...) animal life with the focus on freedom. Ironically, however it is not concerned with the rights of animals; nor is it interested in their remaining alive. So, animals are least benefitted by such provisions, which is the major concern for those who defend animal rights. It seems dubious to demand comfort for a being in life, but not security for its actual life, since rights and freedom are essential for the maintenance of a normal life. This paper aims to critically analyze the animal welfare system, which prioritizes only freedom; to demonstrate how animal welfare is incomplete without animal rights and how they are closely related to each other; and to bridge the gap between animal welfare and animal rights. The underlying principle of animal welfare concept is restricted by its anthropocentric framework with the result that the ethical element is missing. Mere ‘freedom’ is not sufficient for constituting an ideal animal welfare domain. In order to achieve real animal well-being, it is necessary to consider both the rights as well as the welfare of animals. (shrink)

Forced expropriations of immovable property were common during the Communist era in Eastern Europe. Today, many of the former owners or their heirs are interested in regaining legal ownership of such properties, often decades after the ownership has been reallocated to others. Therefore, the conflict between old and new owners is often resolved in favour of the new owners. While this is understandable from a contemporary political perspective, this approach results in a perpetuation of the results of an earlier human (...) rights violation, thereby resulting in a new human rights violation which will have to be measured against the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if the state in question has ratified it prior to deciding how to handle the long-term effects of expropriations. Firstly, in the article we will devote ourselves to the interpretation of the right to property with an emphasis on the problem of expropriation. Above all, we will elaborate on the definition of the term “property” as well as positive and negative obligations of the Member States regarding this right. Finally, we will address the question of expropriations prior to the entry into force of the Convention and just compensation under Article 41 ECHR. Interpretation of the right to property will be supported by the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. (shrink)

I address an issue that arises for rights theories that recognize rights to compensation for rightsintrusions. Do individuals who never pose any risk of harm to others have a right, against a rightsintruder, to full compensation for any resulting intrusion-harm, or is the right limited in some way by the extent to which the intruder was agent-responsible for the intrusion-harm (e.g., the extent to which the harm was a foreseeable result of her autonomous choices)? Although this (...) general issue of strict liability vs. fault liability has been much analyzed and debated, there is a promising position that, to the best of my knowledge, has not been much discussed. This is the view that (1) when the intruder is agent-responsible for violating the rights (e.g., does so knowingly), she owes the intrudee compensation for the entire intrusion-harm, but (2) when the intruder is not agentresponsible for wrongly intruding upon the rights (because the intrusion was not wrong or because the intruder could not reasonably have known it was wrong), then she owes the intrudee compensation only for the intrusion-harm for which she is agent-responsible (and not, for example, harm that she could not have reasonably foreseen). I shall develop and motivate this position without attempting a full defense. Throughout, I focus on the rights of the intrudee, against the intruder, to compensation and the correlative duty of the intruder to the intrudee. I’m pleased and honored to have this paper included in this collection in honor of Hillel Steiner. Much of what I know about rights and libertarianism I learned from him – both from his written works and from his very helpful correspondence over the years. Moreover, his intellectual rigor, honesty, and modesty have been a source of inspiration. Although Hillel has not written extensively on compensation for intrusion-harms, it is a topic central to his view of justice, as it is to mine. (shrink)

Whether writing for a term paper, looking up organizations involving animal rights, or researching information as an animal lover, this is a resource chock full of information on animal rights and welfare. Coverage of issues, controversies, significant historical figures, and ideologies related to the treatment of animals are comprehensive. The essays cover a wide spectrum from the founding of the ASPCA and trapping, to religion and animals. The directory of organizations serves practical purposes, such as where to (...) obtain a three-dimensional model of the frog for educators and both high school and college students".--"Outstanding Reference Sources : the 1999 Selection of New Titles", American Libraries, May 1999. Comp. by the Reference Sources Committee, RUSA, ALA. (shrink)

In this paper I introduce the ‘changing the subject’ problem. When proponents of animal protection use terms such as dignity and respect they can be fairly accused of shifting debate from welfare to rights because the terms purportedly refer to properties and values that are logically distinct from the capacity to suffer and the moral significance of causing animals pain. To avoid this problem and ensure that debate proceeds in the familiar terms of the established welfare paradigm, (...) I present an expressivist analysis of animal rights vocabulary. When terms such as dignity and respect are understood in line with the theory of moral language use known as expressivism, proponents of animal protection that use these terms can escape the charge of changing the subject. Drawing upon Helm’s theory of love, I show how the usage of rights vocabulary can be respectable way for people to register their concern for the welfare of animals, even at times when it is unlikely that the animals concerned are suffering. Tying rights vocabulary to welfare via expressivism aligns the aims of animal rights with welfare without the theoretical problems associated with attempts to ‘reduce’ dignity or respect to natural behaviour or inherent value. (shrink)

This article argues that aspects of the animal rights view can be constructively modulated through a communitarian approach and come to promote animal welfare through the social contexts of expanded caring communities. The Nordic welfare state is presented as a conceivable caring community within which animals could be viewed and treated appropriately as co-citizens with solidarity based rights and duties.

David Kelley presents empirical evidence of the welfare state’s effects on behavior, historical research on the origins of the welfare state, and philosophical clarification of such core ideas as freedom and rights. After a careful examination of the various arguments made on behalf of welfare rights, Kelley concludes that “the concept of welfare rights is invalid.”.

The derivation of a category of ‘environmental rights’ (as argued in this journal by Margaret DeMerieux) from certain cases heard in the European Court of Human Rights is examined. Opposing the majority judicial opinion of that court, there is emerging a dissenting view which is reluctant to extend a rights perspective to those nuisances which can, in theory, be avoided by relocation of the family home. This critique is then extended to Marcic v Thames Water Utilities in (...) which the claimant used the Human Rights Act 1998 (as well as common law) to secure damages for an environmental threat (flooding) to his home. It is further argued that any ‘rights’ dimension currently attached to environmental intrusion on private life will give way to policy imperatives once the effects of climate change come to be recognized. (shrink)

In this paper I defend a theory of welfare rights for nonhuman animals. I do this by demonstrating that a well-established framework for protecting the interests of farm animals, the ‘Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare’, is already functioning just as a set of rights. To support this claim I adopt a common approach to detecting evidence for deontological reasoning and look at the structural features of rights. I first consider Hohfeld’s system of legal rights (...) and consider whether the Five Freedoms may be understood as liberties or claim rights, before making a more successful comparison with side constraints and an interest theory of rights as understood by Nozick and Raz. I also respond to a likely objection that it is not possible to have some welfare rights without a right to freedom from exploitation. The argument therefore contributes to breaking down the stubborn division between ‘animal welfare’ and ‘animal rights’. (shrink)

The Family Planning Association Northern Ireland (F.P.A.N.I.) has recently been successful in holding the state accountable for its duty to safeguard women’s reproductive health and welfare, and clarify the circumstances in which abortion is lawful. By demanding that the Minister for Health investigate abortion provision and produce abortion guidance, F.P.A.N.I. hope to improve the quality of abortion services and alleviate the situation of those women who are legally entitled to abortion in Northern Ireland but cannot access it there. This (...) action has challenged a public failure which impacts most negatively on those women who cannot easily escape its effects. Although the case succeeded in shaming the state for such a failure, the judicial review strategy could not challenge the legal ethos which denies women a say over their reproductive lives. This case commentary argues that pro-choice strategic litigation needs to positively and generally assert women’s reproductive rights at the same time as it seeks to accommodate the needs of the most vulnerable. (shrink)

Although researchers generally take great care to ensure that human subjects do not suffer very serious harms from their involvement in research, the situation is different for nonhuman animal subjects. Significant progress has been made in reducing unnecessary animal suffering in research, yet researchers still inflict severe pain and distress on tens of thousands of animals every year for scientific purposes. Some bioethicists, scientists, and animal welfare advocates argue for placing an upper limit on the suffering researchers may impose (...) on animal subjects, with rare exceptions for research that promises critical social benefits. In this article, I argue against such an upper limit on harm on the grounds that researchers often can compensate animal subjects for their suffering, even severe and long-lasting suffering. If animal subjects receive adequate compensation for the harms they suffer, then there is no general limit on how much suffering researchers may impose on them for scientific purposes. (shrink)

As each individual abandons himself to the solicitous aid of the State,so, and still more, he abandons to it the fate of his fellow-citizens.Wilhelm Von Humboldt,On the Limits of State Action.

This article argues that hunger in Canada, while being an outcome of unemployment, low incomes, and inadequate welfare, springs also from the failure to recognize and implement the human right to food. Food security has, however, largely been ignored by progressive social policy analysis. Barriers standing in the way of achieving food security include the increasing commodification of welfare and the corporatization of food, the depoliticization of hunger by governments and the voluntary sector, and, most particularly, the neglect (...) by the federal and provincial governments of their obligations to guarantee the domestic right to food as expressed in international human rights law. The interconnectedness of hunger, welfare, and food security issues in a first world society are explored from the perspective of progressive social policy and food security analysis and the development of alternative strategies. In terms of advancing the human right to food in Canada, particular emphasis is placed on the role of the state and civil society, and the social and economic rights of citizenship built on an inclusive social policy analysis and politics of welfare, food security and human rights. (shrink)

The article analyzes the features of three main models of the welfare state: German, Northern European, and Anglo-Saxon. The author turns to the analysis of these models, first, because the problem of the welfare state in the world is again coming to the fore, and secondly, because social development in the most developed countries, in the author’s opinion, in the future will be largely determined by the values and behavioral models that are embedded in the three main versions (...) of the social state in Europe. From the author’s point of view, the key features of the European social model, which combines these three versions, are respect for rights and human dignity, the ideas of equality and solidarity, the ideas of social and political compromise, and the choice of an evolutionary path of development. According to the author, these features are the main difference between the European model and what characterizes the political culture of Russia with its maximalism and tendency to extremes. The author believes that the social experience of Europe is something that needs to be addressed today in Russian conditions and that can be extremely valuable for us. At the same time, as shown in the article, the welfare state in Europe has important country features. The German model is characterized by an emphasis on maintaining the socio-economic status of the individual – this is a conservative model. The Northern European model is based on the principles of universal equality and universalism – it is a social-democratic model. And the Anglo-Saxon model, based on the low role of the state, on the great importance of civil society, is a liberal model. Nevertheless, despite significant differences, as shown in the article, all these models are characterized by the desire to implement compromise principles, to find a “Golden mean,” which makes them highly effective. (shrink)

In a recent spate of reflective writings on the concept of human rights, philosophers have been concerned to firm up the analytical boundaries of human rights discourse, without excluding welfare rights from the catalogue. The article considers three of these recent attempts to `revalue the currency' of human rights: the agency conception, the pluralist conception, and the negative duties conception. It ultimately defends a `dignity-based' account of human rights, in which any number of human (...) interests and values may ground a right, but in which the failure to respect the right must constitute a threat to human dignity (one's sense of self-worth as a person) in order for it to count as a genuine human right. It further argues that a `dignity-based' account of human rights justifies a focus on the state as the agent against which human rights are held, and gives us reason to doubt that the state could adequately fulfil the human-rights-based duties it owes its citizens by simple forbearance. On the account offered here, the state may be said to violate the rights of its members, and to threaten their human dignity, when it fails to provide them with the means to realize their basic needs. Key Words: human dignity • civil and political rights • welfare rights • social rights. (shrink)

The theme of this issue of Ethical Perspectives is the French tradition in liberal thought, and the unique contribution that this tradition can make to debates in contemporary liberalism. It is inspired by a colloquium held at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in December of 2008 entitled “In Search of a Lost Liberalism: Constant, Tocqueville, and the singularity of French Liberalism.” This colloquium was held in conjunction with the retirement of Leuven professor and former Dean of the Institute of Philosophy, André (...) Van de Putte, who found much inspiration in this tradition. A revised version of his valedictory lecture from the conference serves as the final contribution to this issue. Much contemporary liberal political philosophy is currently done in conversation with a line of liberal thinkers starting with John Locke, running through Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, and culminating in the work of John Rawls and his followers. The reasons for the enormous appeal of this philosophical tradition are, among other things, the combination of the central role of the intuitively appealing value of individual liberty with a strong rationalistic, universalistic, and normative character. The thread running through most of these liberal theories is a commitment to what the French liberal Benjamin Constant referred to as “the liberty of the moderns,” that is, liberty in a negative sense, as a lack of interference in one’s activity from others and from government. This focus has expanded over time to include a richer body of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights, for instance, in the work of liberal thinkers who have tried to integrate the insights of communitarian thought and discourse ethics in their work. However, the emphasis on individual liberty in the negative sense continues to be the normative and theoretical touchstone and default position for many contemporary liberal theories. The limitation of the canon of liberal thought to the aforementioned authors and themes deprives the contemporary debate of a rich source of ideas: the French liberal tradition. Montesquieu, considered to be the father of this tradition, provides a good example of how it can enrich current debates in liberal theory. Montesquieu’s work evinces a keen eye for the dynamics of power relations and the limitations of the power of the better rational argument. His insight that power can sometimes only be checked by an equal and opposing power, so that a system of separation and balance of powers is necessary in order to preserve liberty, is reflected in the foundations of most modern democracies. Montesquieu also argues that contingent environmental, historical, social and economic conditions play a dramatic role in determining what kind of government is appropriate for a particular society. On his view, ignoring these facts when framing a government can inadvertently end in despotism. Montesquieu’s observations challenge us to reexamine some of contemporary liberalism’s universalist and rationalist claims. Benjamin Constant is most famous for his distinction between two kinds of liberty: the liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the moderns. The ancient form of liberty manifested itself in the active political participation of citizens in the ancient republic. While this form of government and decision-making was suitable for small, homogeneous city-states, Constant argues that it is impracticable for large modern nation-states. Hence, the concept of modern liberty shifts to an emphasis on the rule of law and the non-interference of the state in private matters. This form of liberty is familiar to us from contemporary liberalism – and Constant cherishes this form of freedom as much as any liberal does today. However, his position is complex: he also argues that the liberty of the ancients should not be neglected. Active political participation is needed to ensure that the government is executing its duty of preserving the modern form of liberty by publicly pointing out violations. The contemporary relevance of Constant’s work is clear when we consider the alleged “democratic deficit” that plagues the EU and international institutions such as the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank. Not only does this democratic deficit threaten the modern form of liberty by placing decision-making processes out of sight of the people, it also threatens citizens’ sense of self-respect derived from self-governance. Constant’s argument for the necessity of combining the liberty of the ancients with that of the moderns provides a fruitful resource for confronting these contemporary issues. Tocqueville’s work on liberalism benefits from his opportunity to observe a society founded on liberal democratic principles – the United States of America – in action. In his Democracy in America, he examines the social consequences, both intended and unintended, of building a society on ‘the equality of conditions’, as he defines ‘democracy’. Tocqueville sees a tension between the democratic value of equality and the aristocratic value of the rule of the best. He observes that democratic societies do not necessarily choose the best leaders and instead promote mediocrity instead of virtue, talent, and excellence. Democracy also confronts citizens with the threat of ‘soft despotism’, where a government that preserves the outer signs of the liberty of the moderns nevertheless controls the behavior of its citizens in minute detail through a system of detailed rules ostensibly aimed at their welfare. This paternalism is an even more insidious threat to liberal values than the hard variety of despotism, since it is so difficult to detect and done in the name of liberal values themselves. Taking Tocqueville’s observations seriously would add complexity to attempts to theorize about the modern social-democratic welfare state. The contributions to this issue supplement and critique mainstream liberal thought and its relation to contemporary issues through a serious engagement with the French liberal tradition. Annelien De Dijn’s contribution discusses Bertrand de Jouvenel, a lesser-known 20th Century representative of the French political tradition she terms ‘aristocratic liberalism’. This tradition has its roots in the work of Montesquieu, and emphasizes the importance of intermediary bodies, most importantly the aristocracy, in providing a check to the top-down power of despotic state authorities and the bottom-up power of revolutionary leveling tendencies, both of which threaten liberty. De Dijn situates Jouvenel in this tradition, but then indicates an important difference between his thought and that of his predecessors: his most significant work, On Power, is not only on French history, but on European history. Pointing to the enthusiastic reception of this work in the Anglophone world, she suggests that the rise of totalitarianism in Europe gave the anti-totalitarian features of aristocratic liberalism a broader appeal. Valentino Lumowa’s paper concerns Constant’s classic text, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns. Lumowa argues that in order to understand Constant’s piece, we must be aware that its two parts were written under different historical circumstances and decipher the argumentative thrust inherent in the text. Following Stephen Holmes, he argues that to understand the shift Constant made in the second part of the text, we should read it within the context of the increasing influence of the ultra-Royalists in the legislature during the Bourbon Restoration. However, in contrast to Holmes, he contends that the spirit of both civic and individual freedom, which enlivens representative system, is the backbone of the text in its unity. Demin Duan’s essay investigates an apparent ambivalence between liberal and imperialist tendencies in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, which has already drawn some attention from Tocquevillian scholars. These interpretations of Tocqueville and his writings on empire generally agree that Tocqueville stands in a recognized tradition of liberalism, which is characterized by respect for human rights, individual freedom and a sense of universal humanism. On this standard view, Tocqueville’s support of imperialism represents nothing but an unfortunate breach of his own otherwise consistent liberal thinking. Duan’s article questions this standard position. By questioning the assumption of Tocqueville’s liberalism in the first place, he tries to gauge the influence of both the old republican tradition and the new liberal perspective on his thinking. In conclusion, he argues that Tocqueville’s overall thought, especially his notion of freedom, is very much informed by an old republican tradition. His support of French imperialism could be better understood from this perspective rather than be rendered simply as a deviation from liberal norms. Pawel Marczewski’s contribution is an attempt to show that Tocqueville’s conception of liberty transcends the divisions between negative and positive aspects of freedom. He begins by juxtaposing this conception with the opposition drawn by Constant between liberty of the ancients and liberty of the moderns. While Tocqueville and Constant shared a concern for the preservation of individual rights, Tocqueville was much more reluctant to accept the modern loss of the communal dimension of liberty. He did not accept the view that jouissances privées, private pleasures, are the main compensation that the modern world has to offer for the lost ancient treasure of political participation. The essay then looks into the relevance of Tocqueville’s standpoint for current debates between liberal defenders of negative freedom and republican advocates of freedom as non-domination. Participants on both sides of the debate seem to be so devoted to showing that their particular approach provides the best guarantees against actual and possible threats to liberty that they overlook the fact that their definitions of freedom remain significantly similar. By arguing that ‘to be free is to be guided by one’s own will’, contemporary republicans, as well as their liberal counterparts, move along the lines drawn by Constant towards private pleasures. By questioning the inevitability of this turn, Tocqueville provides us with a valuable contribution to these discussions in contemporary political philosophy. Finally, André Van de Putte’s contribution, an adaptation of his emeritus speech that closed the conference on French Liberalism, appeals to Tocqueville in order to draw attention to the importance of intermediary, dialogical bodies in mitigating the implicit despotic tendencies of the democratic drive to equality. In Tocqueville’s view, the transition from the feudal corporate inequality to democratic individual equality was not a clean break. Rather, this transition is a continual process of democratization that is driven by a desire for equality, or egalité des conditions. This dissolution of distinctions of estate, class and status has the unintended consequence of concentrating the diffuse power of these entities into a centralized state, which is responsible for ensuring the equality of all under the law. This process leaves increasingly isolated and atomized individuals to face the power of a monolithic state in defense of their freedom, and moves toward a soft, paternalistic despotism. Constant’s freedom of the moderns is not sufficient to protect individuals from this centralized power. Democracy also requires the political freedom of the ancients. Van de Putte argues for a system in which atomized individuals organize themselves into intermediary bodies that, in a Montesquieuian balance of powers, can enter into dialogue with each other and the state on more equitable terms. Van de Putte’s contribution closes with a plea for a conception of democracy as a regime of dialogue. (shrink)

Guardians of companion animals killed wrongfully in the U.S. historically receive compensatory judgments reflecting the animal’s economic value. As animals are property in torts law, this value typically is the animal’s fair market value—which is often zero. But this is only the animal’s value, as it were, to a stranger and, in light of the fact that many guardians value their animals at rates far in excess of fair market value, legislatures and courts have begun to recognize a second value, (...) the animal’s value to her guardian. What is this noneconomic value, and how should guardians be compensated for it? In Part 1, I propose a novel method to answer this question. My method includes a third, even more controversial, value: the animal’s value to herself. The idea that an animal could invest in herself faces many criticisms. In Part 2, I defend the claim by examining the mental capacities of dogs (Canis familiaris). I rebut the central objection—that dogs lack the psychological capacities required for self-investment—by showing that dogs are autonomous, think about their futures, and inhibit their desires in light of their goals. I close by suggesting that whereas the approach has conservative implications for the valuation of companion animals, it has radical implications for the valuation of agricultural animals. -/- Keywords: companion animals, animal law, legal theory, value theory, practical ethics, economic value, noneconomic value, intrinsic value, instrumental value, animal welfare, dogs, animal rights, capital value, self-investment value, autonomy, wrongful death, philosophy of animal law, animal minds, moral standing of animals, legal standing of animals, agency, prospection, canine neurobiology, bereavement, replaceability, non-ideal ethics . (shrink)

Anthropogenic climate change is expected to contribute to mass migration from many different regions. Heyward and Ödalen (2016) propose a tailor-made migration option for victims of total territorial loss: a Free Movement Passport for the Territorially Dispossessed (PTD). The PTD presents a significant advancement over standard proposals for individual migration in response to total territorial loss. However, I argue that the compensatory obligations of states are more restrictive than the PTD scheme assumes (sec. 5), and that the contents of the (...) right to compensation of the territorially dispossessed are not as far-reaching as required by it (sec. 6). In response to these difficulties, I argue that its purpose is better served by means of collective migration and propose a Passport for Territorially Dispossessed Collectives, which is also well positioned to serve as a framework for compensating a range of other climate-change related losses (sec. 9). (shrink)

William M. Epstein charges that most current social welfare programs are not held to credible standards in their design or their results. Rather than spending less on such research and programs, however, Epstein suggests we should spend much more, and do the job right. The American public and policymakers need to rely on social science research for objective, credible information when trying to solve problems of employment, affordable housing, effective health care, and family integrity. But, Epstein contends, politicians treat (...) welfare issues as ideological battlegrounds; they demand immediate results from questionable data and implement policies long before social researchers can complete their analyses. Social scientists often play into the political agenda, supporting poorly conceived programs and doing little to test and revise them. Analyzing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and the recent welfare reform act, Food Stamps, Medicaid, job training, social services, and other programs, Epstein systematically challenges the conservative’s vain hope that neglect is therapeutic for the poor, as well as the liberal’s conceit that a little bit of assistance is sufficient. (shrink)

Within a framework of rights that protects children's interests and seek to balance their developing interests in welfare and agency, I consider how contexts of war impact children's lives to argue that such contexts provide opportunities to advance or set back both the development of moral powers, namely capacities for a sense of justice and a conception of the good, and capacities for autonomy. Besides an interest in satisfying their basic needs and protection, children have an interest in (...) developing their moral powers and growing into autonomous agents. Evidence shows great variation in children's responses to traumatic circumstances, from severe psychological disorders to enhanced resiliency and moral reasoning. As moral powers and autonomy ground the permissibility for paternalistic treatment and the exclusion of children from certain rights, I argue that once the war is over children are entitled to an adequate assessment of how their interests and capacities have changed. For children whose development was set back, states should grant opportunities for recovery and further development, which suggests strengthening welfare and protection rights; while for children whose development was advanced, states should recognize such advancement and grant opportunities for the exercise of their newfound capacities, which suggests granting certain agency rights alongside welfare and protection. (shrink)

This article addresses the question of whether present day individuals can inherit rights to compensation from their ancestors. It argues that contemporary writing on compensatory justice in general, and on the inheritability of rights to compensation in particular, has mischaracterized what is at stake in contexts where those responsible for wrongdoing continually refuse to make reparation for their unjust actions, and has subsequently misunderstood how later generations can advance claims rooted in the past mistreatment of their (...) forebears. In particular, a full consideration of the wrongful character of non-rectification needs to take account of the multiplicity of temporal points at which compensation could have been, but was not, paid, each with potentially significant consequences for the victims of injustice. This has relevance for what is owed to those who have been wrongfully denied compensation for wrongs that caused them direct harm, and can be extended to others, such as their direct heirs, who are likewise affected by non-rectification. This opens the door to the endorsement of potentially extensive contemporary claims on behalf of the heirs of victims of wrongdoing. (shrink)