Human Rights, Legitimacy, and the Use of Force

Allen Buchanan author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc

Published:18th Feb '10

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Human Rights, Legitimacy, and the Use of Force cover

The thirteen essays by Allen Buchanan collected here are arranged in such a way as to make evident their thematic interconnections: the important and hitherto unappreciated relationships among the nature and grounding of human rights, the legitimacy of international institutions, and the justification for using military force across borders. Each of these three topics has spawned a significant literature, but unfortunately has been treated in isolation. In this volume Buchanan makes the case for a holistic, systematic approach, and in so doing constitutes a major contribution at the intersection of International Political Philosophy and International Legal Theory. A major theme of Buchanan's book is the need to combine the philosopher's normative analysis with the political scientist's focus on institutions. Instead of thinking first about norms and then about institutions, if at all, only as mechanisms for implementing norms, it is necessary to consider alternative "packages" consisting of norms and institutions. Whether a particular norm is acceptable can depend upon the institutional context in which it is supposed to be instantiated, and whether a particular institutional arrangement is acceptable can depend on whether it realizes norms of legitimacy or of justice, or at least has a tendency to foster the conditions under which such norms can be realized. In order to evaluate institutions it is necessary not only to consider how well they implement norms that are now considered valid but also their capacity for fostering the epistemic conditions under which norms can be contested, revised, and improved.

The articles collected here together constitute a major contribution to the underdeveloped field of the philosophy of international law, a field in which Buchanan has been a leading light over the past decade. * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *

ISBN: 9780195389654

Dimensions: 163mm x 236mm x 31mm

Weight: 635g

352 pages