Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
- Institution
Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Law
Illiberalism And Authoritarianism In The American States, James A. Gardner
Illiberalism And Authoritarianism In The American States, James A. Gardner
Journal Articles
Federalism contemplates subnational variation, but in the United States the nature and significance of that variation has long been contested. In light of the recent turn, globally and nationally, toward authoritarianism, and the concurrent sharp decline in public support not merely for democracy but for the philosophical liberalism on which democracy rests, it is necessary to discard or to substantially revise prior accounts of the nature of state-to-state variation in the U.S. All such accounts implicitly presuppose a common commitment, across the political spectrum, to the core tenets of democratic liberalism, and consequently that subnational variations in policy preferences and …
Africa And The Rule Of Law, Makau Wa Mutua
Africa And The Rule Of Law, Makau Wa Mutua
Journal Articles
The rule of law is often seen as a panacea for ensuring a successful, fair and modern democracy which enables sustainable development. However, as Makau Mutua highlights, this is not the case. Using the example of African states, he describes how no African country has truly thrown off the shackles of colonial rule and emerged as a truly just nation state – even though many have the rule of law at the heart of their constitutions. This, he argues, is because the Western concept of the rule of law cannot be simply transplanted to Africa. The concept must be adapted …
Human Rights And Powerlessness: Pathologies Of Choice And Substance, Makau Mutua
Human Rights And Powerlessness: Pathologies Of Choice And Substance, Makau Mutua
Journal Articles
The human rights corpus is a bundle of pathologies of choice and substance. But these pathologies are ideologically driven and inhere in the human rights movement because of the political choices and biases that are part of the cultural universe of human rights. In particular, the corpus is captive to thin notions of human rights that tend not to challenge deeply embedded social and economic assumptions and systems. The historical narrative of the human rights movement closely parallels the hegemonic rise of the West and hence the movement’s imprisonment in an intellectual project that casts the human being in the …
Book Review, Mark C. Modak-Truran
Book Review, Mark C. Modak-Truran
Journal Articles
While Bauman provides persuasive rebuttals to many of the CLS criticisms of liberalism, contemporary liberalism suffers from some of the same shortcomings Bauman observes about CLS. For example, Bauman criticizes CLS for not having a conceptual foundation (an external standard of truth) to demystify the liberal legal consciousness claimed to be inherent in the law. Bauman also argues that contemporary liberal theorists, like John Rawls, avoid the “comprehensive metaphysical or ontological framework” (p.30), held to be incoherent by CLS. However, Bauman fails to realize that Rawls similarly lacks a conceptual foundation to justify his “political not metaphysical” form of political …
Savages, Victims, And Saviors: The Metaphor Of Human Rights, Makau Wa Mutua
Savages, Victims, And Saviors: The Metaphor Of Human Rights, Makau Wa Mutua
Journal Articles
This article critically looks at the human rights project as a damning three-dimensional metaphor that exposes multiple complexes. It argues that the grand narrative of human rights contains a subtext which depicts an epochal contest pitting savages, on the one hand, against victims and saviors, on the other. The savages-victims-saviors (SVS) construction lays bare some of the hypocrisies of the human rights project and asks human rights thinkers and advocates to become more self-reflective. The piece questions the universality and cultural neutrality of the human rights project. It calls for the construction of a truly universal human rights corpus, one …
The Ideology Of Human Rights, Makau Wa Mutua
The Ideology Of Human Rights, Makau Wa Mutua
Journal Articles
This piece argues that although human rights is an ideology although it presents itself as non-ideological, non-partisan, and universal. It contends that the human rights corpus, taken as a whole, as a document of ideals and values, particularly the positive law of human rights, requires the construction of states to reflect the structures and values of governance that derive from Western liberalism, especially the contemporary variations of liberal democracy practiced in Western democracies. Viewed from this perspective, the human rights regime has serious and dramatic implications for questions of cultural diversity, the sovereignty of states, and the universality of human …
Liberalism And Natural Law Theory, John M. Finnis
Liberalism And Natural Law Theory, John M. Finnis
Journal Articles
I shall argue, in the course of this lecture, that the title I gave myself is a bad one, one that sets a bad example. "Liberalism," like "conservatism" and "socialism," is too local, contingent and shifting a term to deserve a place in a general theory of society, politics, government and law. So I had better say at once which proposition or set of propositions I, on this occasion, was gesturing towards with the word "liberalism," out of all the many propositions, often conflicting, which have been called "liberal." What I had in mind was the thesis that government and …
Review Essay: Liberalism And The Supreme Court, Donald P. Kommers
Review Essay: Liberalism And The Supreme Court, Donald P. Kommers
Journal Articles
In Liberalism and American Constitutional Law, Rogers M. Smith of Yale University takes stock of the American liberal tradition and its impact on the Supreme Court's constitutional jurisprudence. It argues that the tradition's political vision lacks philosophical coherence and that our constitutional law, by reflecting this incoherence, has failed to provide the legal community with a public philosophy suited to the needs of American society in the late twentieth century.His goal is to demonstrate the superiority of "rational liberty," both as a philosophical theory and practical guide to constitutional policymaking, over three major competing versions of liberal constitutionalism. To wit: …