Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Political Science." Includes bibliographical references (p. 222-234).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Divinity School, August 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

This dissertation aims to show that Thomas Pogge’s central contention – that citizens and governments of the affluent countries have unduly harmed the global poor through their collaboration in the imposition upon the latter an unjust global institutional scheme – remains sound despite the various criticisms his theory has provoked. In the first chapter, I will focus on elaborating and clarifying various important aspects of Pogge’s framework of institutional analysis: that an adequate institutional analysis must be comprehensive with regard to the objects being assessed, and it must be performed in a holistic manner. I will also critically examine and rebut the view that, in the absence of a world government, the project of global justice makes little, if any, sense. In chapter two I will focus on three main criticisms that have been made against the moral substance of Pogge’s conception of global justice – his human-rights-based principle of global justice and his institutional construal of negative duty. The first criticism argues that Pogge’s notion of negative duty is unduly inflated and blurs the distinction between institutional harm-doing and –allowing. The second argues that Pogge’s theory is incomplete in relation to the goal of poverty eradication and should be supplemented with the notion of positive duty. The third argues that Pogge’s principle is over-demanding with regard to the affluent. I will contend that each of these three criticisms is flawed: the first criticism is flawed for it fails to properly interpret Pogge’s principle in light of the ecumenical argumentative strategy adopted by Pogge; the second is problematic for it tends to rely upon an underestimation of the extent to which the existing global order has unjustly contributed to world poverty; and the third criticism can be defused by our adopting a temporally extended construal of Pogge’s notion of a “pattern-preference”. / published_or_final_version / Philosophy / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Philosophy

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Sexual orientation, especially between males, has historically been met with harsh criminal sanctions. Only in this century has the issue been one of fundamental freedom and private choices. This study analyses the legal history of the concept of choice in sexual orientation in the European Commission of Human Rights (the Commission) and the European Court of Human Right (the Court), and documents the evolution of sexual orientation rights from the 1950s until today specifically focusing on why the human rights protection has changed. Until 1975 the Commission did not consider absolute criminalisation contrary to the right to respect for privacy or as discrimination, but this approach started to change in 1975. A stricter test of what is considered necessary in a democratic society led to the Dudgeon judgement in 1980 where absolute criminalisation of homosexuality was found to be contrary to the right to respect for privacy in the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention). This judgement has largely been responsible for decriminalisation throughout the Council of Europe member-States. This decriminalisation was limited to private, adult acts that were consensual and this was the norm until 1997. In that year, unequal ages of consent also was found to be contrary to the Convention. The study showed that this evolution was facilitated mainly by a European consensus, based on the legislation of the member-States and expert knowledge. The European consensus doctrine has proven to be a very complex concept, and this study argues that a regional approach to the consensus enquiry is a better solution than the present doctrine, and solves some of the problems it has proven to cause.

No description available.

No description available.

This doctoral thesis investigates contemporary disputes about international distributive justice by first outlining a distinctive human rights approach to the issues and then assessing alternative views of various kinds. The thesis is organized in terms of the dispute between cosmopolitans and communitarians on the question of ethics in international political theory. Part One of the thesis, 'Cosmopolitanism,' outlines and evaluates the most significant cosmopolitan theories of international justice. Following an introductory chapter in which the debate is introduced in a general way. Chapter Two focuses on basic human rights. Chapter Three is on utilitarianism, and Chapter Four investigates Onora O'Neill's Kantian approach to international justice. I conclude that the human rights approach, conceptualized in a distinctive form, is the most promising of these alternatives. Part Two of the thesis, 'Communitarianism,' investigates various "communitarian" challenges to the universalist ambitions of the arguments defended in Part One. These challenges are designed to prove that the pretensions of cosmopolitans are illusory, incoherent, overridden by some morally more important considerations, or otherwise wrong-headed. Constitutive theorists maintain that, while there are perhaps good grounds for recognizing the claims of human beings qua human beings, cosmopolitans fail to take proper account of the value of what we might call certain intra-species collectivities, most importantly, sovereign states (Chapter Eight). Relativists hold that justice is subject to community-relative standards that make cross-cultural comparisons impossible. Hence, universal claims to justice make no sense (Chapter Seven). Defenders of nationality base their conclusions on the ethical value of the 'nation,' and sometimes claim that distributive justice can be discussed properly only within the context of a given national community (Chapter Six). Patriots emphasize devotion to one's country as a primary moral virtue, and conclude that such devotion, in practice, amounts to legitimate favouritism for compatriots and, therefore, at least potentially, the denial of some of the claims of non-compatriots. If such a view requires the denial of the full force of human rights claims, then patriotism conflicts with cosmopolitanism (Chapter Five). The argument of Part Two is that, on the whole, the communitarian challenges do not succeed. Nevertheless, there are significant lessons to be learned from the criticisms in each case. The defence of cosmopolitanism is strengthened by exposure to these objections, even though they do not provide any grounds for rejecting the basic human rights claims of individuals.

Fifty years after the Nuremberg trials, Europe is challenged once again with a question: Who is responsible for state-sponsored violations of human rights. This time, those put on trial or ostracised from power are elements of the Communist structures of control. Some observers have criticised these measures of political justice, comparing them to a 'witch hunt,' and accusing the courts and legislature of often engendering an unjustifiable collective guilt. In contrast, others have claimed that not enough is being done; that the people of Eastern Europe "have asked for justice, and got the rule of law." In this thesis, the author proposes an assessment of the process of political justice taking place in post-Communist Eastern Europe. The approach taken is from the perspective of the role played in this process by the concept of collective responsibility of political organisations for violations of human rights. While concentrating on the way collective responsibility appears in the criminal law measures taken in Hungary, and in the administrative procedures of screening used in the Czech Republic, the thesis also aims to offer a comprehensive picture of the general debate on accountability for past human rights violations which takes place in post-Communist Eastern Europe. The thesis underlines the complexity of the political reality in which the expectations for accountability for state-sponsored violations of human rights are answered. It also emphasises the importance for this answer to acknowledge the nature of the Communist regime, and of its representative structure known under the name of Nomenklatura. Based on these elements, the author argues for the necessity of combining individual and collective responsibility for human rights violations. A reconstructed concept of collective agency and collective responsibility appears to be the solution to the inconsistencies otherwise manifested in a process of political justice. Such concepts, the author argues, should allow for the acknowledgement - through commissions of truth, as well as through prosecution and screening - of the role played by the Communist structure of power in the violations of human rights which took place under its regime.