By Sonu Bedi
The language of rights is ubiquitous. It shapes the way in which we build our debates over matters reminiscent of abortion, affirmative motion and sexual freedom. This provocative new research demanding situations the very idea of rights, arguing that they jeopardize our liberty and undermine democratic debate. through re-conceptualizing our principles approximately restricted executive, it means that we will restrict the explanations or rationales on which the polity could act. while we as soon as used the language of rights to thwart democratic majorities, Bedi argues that we should always now flip our awareness to the democratic state's reason behind performing. it will let larger democratic flexibility and restraint whereas making sure real liberty. Deftly using political conception and constitutional legislation to country its case, the examine notably rethinks the connection among liberty and democracy, and should be crucial examining for students and scholars of political and criminal philosophy.
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Additional resources for Rejecting Rights (Contemporary Political Theory)
Sample text
To have democracy play a role in the original position – informing Rawls’ principles of justice – is to un-do the veil of ignorance. The abstracting quality of the veil entails that we leave behind our affiliation or membership in a democratic polity. After all, it is the a-contextual nature of the original position that supposedly generates the correctness of the two principles of justice. Since these principles are universal – they apply to all – a robust role for democracy is once more absent.
Shapiro 1986: 14. : 14. The classic conception of rights 15 we have specified those behaviors, activities, or interests of a person or group beyond the scope of state regulation, we leave little room for democracy. Since the subjects of rights are members of the polity, and not the polity itself, there is no necessary connection to the democratic value of self-government. In his discussion of negative liberty, Isaiah Berlin says as much: But there is no necessary connection between individual liberty and democratic rule.
Ch. VIII. : sec. 96–97, sec. 133. : Chs. VIII, X. : Ch. XIX; see also Shapiro 2003b: 325–332. 15 Locke 1988 [1690]: sec. 135. The classic conception of rights 17 way pre-political, we should be careful not to impose too much of a constraint. We need to permit the polity to have a substantive (though not complete) role in defining our normative obligations. Locke provides no such role. It is no surprise, then, that Locke contemplates the existence of any number of governments. The kind of government – monarchic, oligarchic, or democratic – does not change the obligations it has to its members.