Human Rights, Democracy, and the Conception of Persons as Equals

TAKES PLACE IN CONCORDIA HALL BUILDING, ROOM H-1220

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.  Her argument issues from a general account of human rights as including in their content a conception of persons as equals.  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.  She argues that the considerations to which proponents of the discontinuity thesis appeal—about political obligation, self-determination, and toleration—fail to make the thesis persuasive.