13. Why International Legal Human Rights 14. Human Rights Pragmatism and Human Dignity推荐.pdfVIP

13 Why International Legal Human Rights? Allen Buchanan I. A Neglected But Fundamental Question Recent philosophical theorizing about human rights is burgeoning. There is one glaring lacuna, however. Philosophers have not identified, much less addressed, one of the most fundamental questions a philosophical theory of human rights must answer: What justification, if any, is there for having a system of international legal human rights? Because the system of international legal rights is central to contempo- rary human rights practice, one must answer that question to know whether the prac- tice is justified. Instead, the focus has been on three different questions: (1) how is the concept of human rights to be analyzed, (2) how are statements about the existence of moral human rights to be justified, and (3) how can moral philosophy be enlisted to criticize or help justify various particular international legal human rights?1 Question (1) is poorly framed because it assumes, without warrant, that there is one concept of human rights. Instead, it can be argued that there are at least two: the con- cept of human rights as general moral rights of all human individuals, regardless of whether they are recognized in positive law, whether domestic or international; and the concept of international legal human rights.2 The former concept was evident in 1 On question (1) Beitz and others who espouse what is sometimes called a Political (or Practical) view hold that the key to understanding the concept of human rights is to see how claims about human rights function in international human rights practice. They conclude it is part of the concept of human rights that if these rights are violated by a state, then other states have a pro tanto reason to take action against the violator (Beitz) or that violations disable what would otherw