Human Rights and John Rawls The Law of Peoples

Human Rights and John Rawls The Law of Peoples

Abstract: Which political and juridical foundation can justify the transit from the Western, particular, to the universal? John Rawls tries to answer this question in his article, "The Law of Peoples," proposing a kind of contract or agreement. A first agreement should be attained among liberal-democratic societies on a few political and social issues such as human rights. Then this agreement can be widened to non-liberal/democratic but well organized hierarchical societies or those that satisfy the requisites of being peaceful, of having a reasonably well organized legal system, of admitting a measure of freedom-political and religious-and of admitting the right of emigration. These two groups of nations would belong to a Society of Nations with the juridical and political duty of fulfilling the few political issues that have been previously accepted. But Rawls' proposal overcomes neither eurocentrism nor western-centrism. It seems that the first circle of liberal democratic nations would decide which peoples satisfy the requirements of the 'well organized hierarchical societies.' This second circle of nations are only invited peoples; they are not supposed to contribute new proposals, but only to accept the proposals of the liberal-democratic nations. I present a new effort to attain human rights through a true universal dialogue in which the representatives of all cultures and peoples can equally speak, make proposals, and listen or accept the proposals of others.

I. RAISING THE ISSUE

Human rights, specially those belonging to the first generation, as they are expressed in "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights" of December, 10th, 1948, are the end product of a long...

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(5) Rawls John, "The Law of the Peoples", p. 45.

(6) Rawls John, "The Law of the Peoples", pp.50-53.

(7) Rawls John, "The Law of the Peoples", p. 57.

(8) Rawls John, A Theory of Justice, p. 19: it seems reasonable to suppose that the parties in the original position are equal. That is, all have the same rights in the procedure for choosing principles; each can make pro-posals, submit reasons for their acceptance, and so on.

(9) To be objective, John Rawls does accept the possibility of working out a law of peoples, human rights being a part of such law of peoples, by starting with an all inclusive original position with representatives of all the individual persons of the world, such as Brian Barry does in his Theories of Justice, Berkeley, 1989. Rawls thinks that both ways should lead to the same law of peoples ("The Law of Peoples", p. 54-55).