Human Rights, Democracy, and the Conception of Persons as Equals
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY, Henry F. Hall Building, room H-1220, 1455 De Maisonneuve W., Montreal, Quebec H3G 1M8
Philosophy Lecture Series talk with Jiewuh Song, Post-doctoral Fellow, Yale University, organized by the McGill Centre for Human Rights & Legal Pluralism, and the Department of Political Science of Concordia University.
Dr Song holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy (2013) and a J.D. (2006), both from Harvard University. Her research interests cover political philosophy, philosophy of law, international law, and normative ethics.
Abstract
Professor Song will argue for a human right to democracy. She understands this right as offering, in a way that is consistent with understanding persons as equals, (i) an institutional safeguard against threats to basic interests in political participation; and (ii) a solution to the problem of coordinating diverse political opinions.聽 Her argument issues from a general account of human rights as including in their content a conception of persons as equals.聽 It is thus also a rejection of what she calls the discontinuity thesis, or the influential view that democracy is robustly egalitarian in a way that human rights are not.聽 She argues that the considerations to which proponents of the discontinuity thesis appeal鈥攁bout political obligation, self-determination, and toleration鈥攆ail to make the thesis persuasive.
