The author outlines an analysis of fundamental human rights compatible with historical relativism and applies this to the political right of freedom of expression and the economic right to work. Finally he deploys the proposed analysis of socialist rights to explain the ambivalence of socialist thinkers towards welfare rights.

This critical exposition of Adam Smith's 'Theory of Moral Sentiments' gives an appreciation of Smith's conception of scientific method as applied to the study of social phenomena. This study provides an illuminating interpretation of Smith's moral theory and defends it against any mistaken criticisms.

All students and advocates of human rights will be interested in this concerted exploration of the human rights moral obligations that fall, not directly on states, but on private and public organisations. Such an approach to human rights opens up the possibility of holding corporations and bureaucracies to account for human rights violations even when they have acted in accordance with the law. This interdisciplinary and international project brings together eminent philosophers, lawyers, social scientists and practitioners to articulate theoretically and develop in practical contexts the...

Forty years ago, in his landmark work A Theory of Justice, the American philosopher John Rawls depicted a just society as a fair system of cooperation between citizens, regarded as free and equal persons. Justice, Rawls famously claimed, is 'the first virtue of social institutions'. Ever since then, moral and political philosophers have expanded, expounded and criticized Rawls's main tenets, from perspectives as diverse as egalitarianism, left and right libertarianism and the ethics of care. This volume of essays provides a general overview of the main strands in contemporary justice...

In this invaluable introduction to the study of human society, the author presents the influential theories of Aristotle, Hobbes, Smith, Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Alfred Schutz.

Reacting to the mixed record of the UK Human Rights Act 1998 and similar enactments concerned with the protection of human rights, this book explores ways of promoting human rights more effectively through political and democratic mechanisms. The book expresses ideological skepticism concerning the relative neglect of social and economic rights and institutional skepticism concerning the limitations of court-centered means for enhancing human rights goals in general. The contributors criticize the 'juridification' of human rights through transferring the prime responsibility for identifying...

The diagnosis of 'Dyslexia' and the medical problematisation of reading difficulties were almost unknown one hundred years ago, yet today the British Dyslexia Association estimates that up to ten per cent of the UK population may have some form of dyslexia, with numbers in the United States estimated to be as high as twenty per cent. The Government of Reading investigates how this problematisation developed and how a diagnostic category was shaped in response to this.

In this book, a distinguished international group of legal theorists re-examine legal positivism as a prescriptive political theory and consider its implications for the constitutionally defined roles of legislatures and courts. The issues are illustrated with recent developments in Australian constitutional law.