Human Rights for Liberals

Abstract:     
James Griffin’s rich and elegant study, On Human Rights (Oxford, 2008), is a superbly accomplished book. Its range is impressive. It offers a discussion of the general status of values, a general theory of rights, concrete accounts of the right to welfare, the right to privacy, the right to life, the link with democracy and the idea of group rights, among other things. At every stage we are treated to a clear, rigorous and elegant discussion full of broad learning and penetrating judgment, which readers of Griffin’s earlier books have perhaps learned to expect. Yet, the view of human rights that Griffin defends is strangely narrow and unfamiliar in that it is not connected to any political or legal framework.

Accepted Paper Series