The ADA on the Road: Disability Rights in Germany

This paper examines the impact of a "disability rights model" on the emerging disability rights movement in Germany. Traditional German disability politics and activism are based on the expansion of welfare and special needs provisions rather than on equal rights and integration. Inspired by the 1990 Americans with Disability Act, German activists adopted a disability rights model and successfully worked toward the passage of a constitutional equality amendment in 1994 and ant-discrimination legislation in 2002. Using the literature on rights mobilization, this paper argues that German disability activists use rights talk to both support and contest culturally specific approaches to disability rights, equal treatment, and the role of the state in guaranteeing welfare rights. The globalization of disability rights should not be viewed as an imposition of American norms but as a more complex process of adaptation and cultural transformation that involves constructing locally legitimate approaches to disability rights with an American import.     

Legal History and the Problem of the Long Civil Rights Movement

This essay offers a critical examination of use of the term “long civil rights movement” as a framework for understanding the legal history of the battle against racial inequality in twentieth‐century America. Proponents of the long movement argue that expanding the chronological boundaries of the movement beyond the 1950s and 1960s allows scholars to better capture the diverse social mobilization efforts and ideas that fueled the black freedom struggle. While not questioning the long framework's usefulness for studying the social movement dynamics of racial justice activism, I suggest that the long framework is of more limited value for those who seek to understand the development of civil rights, as a legal claim, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century. The tendency of long movement scholars to treat civil rights as a pliable category into which they can put any and all racial justice claims is in tension with historical understandings of the term. Susan Carle's Defining the Struggle: National Organizing for Racial Justice, 1880–1915 suggests an alternative approach. Her detailed and nuanced account of a period in American history when racial justice activists understood civil rights as a relatively narrow subset of legal remedies within a much broader struggle for racial equality indicates the need for an alternate history of civil rights—one that places the evolving, contested, and historically particularized concept of civil rights at the center of inquiry.     

权利类属理论之反思——以霍菲尔德权利理论为分析框架

权利话语所面对的窘境在于提出主张的双方希冀透过权利所获得的保障,或说阻止他人行为的意图虽不必然同一,但由于共同内涵中词汇的共享,使问题变得棘手。与其争论相冲突的权利主张孰轻孰重,美国学者霍菲尔德指出权利一词蕴含四种不同的法律关系,分别是权利、特权、能力与豁免,并以实务判决作为分析对象,为不同的权利类属进行定性说明。借用霍菲尔德理论架构,并据此推断美国罗伊诉韦德案判决所保障之权利应该属于霍菲尔德理论中的何种类属。     

The Mythology of Human Rights

Abstract. A special legal status is accorded to human rights within Western liberal democracies: They enjoy a priority over other human goods and are not subjected to the majoritarian principle. The underlying assumption—the idea that there are some human values that deserve special protection—implies the need for both a normative and a conceptual justification. This paper claims that neither can be provided. The normative justification is needed to support the priority of human rights over other human goods and to rank and balance conflicting human rights, but it can't be provided because of the fact of pervasive value pluralism, the fact that human values are many, incompatible and incommensurable. The conceptual justification is needed to avoid arbitrariness in the interpretation of human rights at the adjudication stage. Such a justification is impossible, however, as the concept of human rights, and the concepts used to justify them and to solve their conflicts are “essentially contested concepts.” The paper concludes that, provided that the interpretation of human rights presupposes value judgements and political choices, the special legal status accorded to human rights is not justified.     

The Denigration of Rights and the Persistence of Rights Talk: A Cultural Portrait

The following two themes emerge in an investigation of legal culture in the United States: (1) a denigration of rights and yet (2) a persistent notion that rights are important and should be salvaged. The discourse of rights continues to act as an important frame of reference throughout legal culture. The open-ended nature of rights discourse plus the powerful cultural resonance of rights encourage the use of rights talk to frame issues even when the framers are severely critical of the use of rights. Even if many people agree, however, there are reasons to assess this consensus negatively.     

权利冲突的司法化解

法定权利之间的冲突并非一个伪命题,其在司法实践中颇为常见。受到立法者的有限理性、社会的变动性以及法律语言的模糊性等多重因素的影响,某些情形下权利的边界未被立法者清晰界定,并由此引发法定权利之间的冲突。权利冲突的实质是利益冲突和价值冲突。权利冲突的存在导致了法律适用的难题,法官需要借助个案中的法益衡量来确定权利边界并进而化解权利冲突。法官在进行法益衡量时,可以参考权利位阶来作出判断,然而权利位阶秩序缺乏整体确定性,仅有有限的参考价值,因此法益衡量还需诉诸比例原则。比例原则包括适当性原则、必要性原则和狭义的比例原则三项子原则。比例原则能够指引法官对权利作客观和理性的衡量,最大限度地缩小法官的裁量余地。鉴于个案中的法益衡量具有决策性质,法官必须在司法能动主义与司法克制主义之间维持恰当的平衡,在解决权利冲突时不能逾越司法的限度。     

Legal Rights and the Limits of Conceptual Analysis: A Case Study

Legal philosophers divide over whether it is possible to analyze legal concepts without engaging in normative argument. The influential analysis of legal rights advanced by Jules Coleman and Jody Kraus some years ago serves as a useful case study to consider this issue because even some legal philosophers who are generally skeptical of the neutrality claims of conceptual analysts have concluded that Coleman and Kraus's analysis manages to maintain such neutrality. But that analysis does depend in subtle but important ways on normative claims. Their argument assumes not only a positivist concept of law, but also that it counts in favor of an analysis of legal rights that it increases the number of options available to legal decisionmakers. Thus, whether Coleman and Kraus's analysis is right in the end depends on whether those normative assumptions are justified. If even their analysis, which makes the thinnest of conceptual claims, depends on normative premises, that fact serves as strong evidence of the difficulty of analyzing legal concepts while remaining agnostic on moral and political questions.     

Interpreting the Political Theory in the Practice of Human Rights

In this discussion of The Heart of Human Rights, I support Allen Buchanan’s pursuit of a theory-in-practice methodology for interpreting the foundations and meaning of international legal human rights from within the practice. Following my use of that methodology, I recharacterize the theory of rights revealed by this methodology as political not moral. I clarify the import of this interpretation of international legal human rights for two problems that trouble Buchanan: (1) whether the scope of ‘basic equal status’ is a global or an ‘intrasocial’ standard and (2) whether there is a ‘proliferation’ of rights that risks undermining the legitimacy of international legal human rights. I argue that the scope of basic equal status is global and that the practice of making what he calls ‘new’ rights claims is part of the practice of human rights.     

Negotiating Social Norms and Relations in the Micromobilization of Human Rights: The Case of Burmese Lesbian Activism

This article provides the first sociolegal analysis of lesbian rights activism in Myanmar. It elucidates the processes through which a group of lesbian activists navigate sexual and gender norms that oppress lesbians as sexual minorities and as women while they use human rights discourse to carry out micromobilization work, organizing constituents and building up grassroots participation in Myanmar. It analyzes how the collective deployment of human rights encompasses resistance against social norms that pose organizing obstacles for activists and the negotiations of social relations to counter them. These micromobilization processes shape whether and how activists adopt human‐rights‐based strategies and tactics. Bringing together law and society scholarship and social movement studies, the article highlights the importance of understanding human rights mobilization by marginalized populations who face multiple, overlapping forms of oppression and contend with plural sources of power.     

Fear of the Disability Con: Perceptions of Fraud and Special Rights Discourse

This article presents a new framework for analyzing the development and implementation of disability law: the prism of the fear of “the disability con”—popular perceptions of fraud and fakery. We all encounter disability rights and accommodations in everyday life. However, people with disabilities pay a price for the legal recognition of their rights. People who park in disabled parking spots, use service dogs, move to the front of lines, receive Social Security benefits, or request academic accommodations are often viewed as faking disabilities and abusing the law. This disability con stereotype thus serves as an important invisible barrier preventing Americans with disabilities from fully taking part in society, as it not only undermines the public legitimacy of rights but also restricts the design and implementation of the legal regime illustrating those. Nevertheless, this moral panic around disability con in American society and its manifestations has yet to be studied in a systematic‐empirical way, nor has it been addressed in sociolegal scholarship. Using a mixed‐methods approach composed of an original nationally representative survey along with in‐depth interviews, this article fills this gap. The data suggest that the stereotype of disability con applies to multiple disability rights across venues and contexts; that nearly 60% of Americans with disabilities feel that others question their disability; that the stereotype of disability con extends to visible disabilities and to less apparent ones; and that, counterintuitively, the people most suspicious are nondisabled individuals with a personal connection to a disabled person and disabled people who experience suspicion themselves. Based on the richer understanding of the sociolegal phenomenon, this article suggests strategies to increase trust and reduce suspicion of the disability con.     

Human Rights in an Era of Neoliberal Globalization: The Alien Tort Claims Act and Grassroots Mobilization in Doe v. Unocal

This article examines a widely publicized corporate accountability and human rights case filed by Burmese plaintiffs and human rights litigators in 1996 under the Alien Tort Claims Act in U.S. courts, Doe v. Unocal , in conjunction with the three main theoretical approaches to analyzing how law may matter for broader social change efforts: (1) legal realism, (2) Critical Legal Studies (CLS), and (3) legal mobilization. The article discusses interactions between Doe v. Unocal and grassroots Burmese human rights activism in the San Francisco Bay Area, including intersections with corporate accountability activism. It argues that a transnationally attuned legal mobilization framework, rather than legal realist or CLS approaches, is most appropriate to analyze the political opportunities and indirect effects of Doe v. Unocal and similar litigation in the context of neoliberal globalization. Further, this article argues that human rights discourse may serve as a common vocabulary and counterhegemonic resource for activists and litigators in cases such as Doe v. Unocal , contrary to overarching critiques of such discourse that emphasize only its hegemonic potentials in global governance regimes.     

After the Critique of Rights: For a Radical Democratic Theory and Practice of Human Rights

The critique of human rights has proliferated in critical legal thinking over recent years, making it clear that we can no longer uncritically approach human rights in their liberal form. In this article I assert that after the critique of rights one way human rights may be productively re-engaged in radical politics is by drawing from the radical democratic tradition. Radical democratic thought provides plausible resources to rework the shortcomings of liberal human rights, and allows human rights to be brought within the purview of a wider political project adopting a critical approach to current relations of power. Building upon previous re-engagements with rights using radical democratic thought, I return to the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to explore how human rights may be thought as an antagonistic hegemonic activity within a critical relation to power, a concept which is fundamentally futural, and may emerge as one site for work towards radical and plural democracy. I also assert, via Judith Butler’s model of cultural translation, that a radical democratic practice of human rights may be advanced which resonates with and builds upon already existing activism, thereby holding possibilities to persuade those who remain sceptical as to radical re-engagements with rights.     

Mothers, Extraordinary Labor, and Amacasual: Law and Politics of Nonstandard Employment in the South African Retail Sector

This article examines changing social meaning embodying legal categories of nonstandard employment within South African retailing between the 1950s and the postapartheid period. Using archival and interview material, the article shows how trade unions constructed part-time and casual employment through gendered, class, and racial meanings to produce two very different legal categories. Black workers' rights claims in the 1980s developed within these changing socio-legal parameters. The image of the full-time permanent worker became political agent, and in the postapartheid period, increasing numbers of casual workers became marginalized from the union. The relationship between rights and regulation gives us a more complex way of understanding worker politics.     

Insatiable Rights

The essay criticises Ferrajoli's ideas about political democracyand the relationship between it and fundamental rights. Thedefinition of `substantial democracy' furnished by Ferrajoliis considered inopportune, because it claims to provide a semanticsolution to the normative problem of the limits of content ofdemocratic decisions. Ferrajoli is also criticised for equatingconstitutions with the social contract, with the result thatthe functioning of political democracy is tied to unanimousconsent and constitutions are treated as eternal. Finally, theauthor argues that treating the lack of guarantees of fundamentalrights in a legal order as a technical gap is tantamount toconceiving rights and their guarantees as something preordainedto positive law and subtracting them from the democraticlegislator's political decisions.     

能动司法背景下的法律方法诉求

近年来,能动司法成为法学界的一个研究热点,本文通过探讨我国能动司法与美国司法能动主义的区别,阐述我国的能动司法不是简单的裁判理念,而是一种政治型能动政策。理想的司法能动是功能上的能动与方法上克制的统一,当前我国的能动司法属于政策推动性质,缺乏对能动的应有规范,而法律方法恰好能从有效性和正当性方面对司法活动予以必要的规制,因此也就成为当前我国能动司法的必然诉求。     

《儿童权利公约》与我国儿童证人权利制度之完善

儿童证人是刑事诉讼中特殊的诉讼参与人。《儿童权利公约》确立了对儿童权益保护的一般原则，有关国际文件也确立了儿童证人在刑事诉讼中所应享有的诉讼权利。国外的刑事诉讼立法有的也对儿童证人权利制度作了规定。比较而言，我国儿童证人权利制度内容贫乏，既不能满足司法实践对儿童证人保护的需要，也没有体现公约及有关国际文件的要求。应从免于宣誓等方面构建我国儿童证人权利制度。     

Social Movements and the Politics of Bureaucratic Rights Enforcement: Insights from the Allocation of Disability Rights in France

While research on legal mobilization shows how social movements contribute to the definition and implementation of rights, it remains excessively centered on litigation to the detriment of administrative rights enforcement. This article maps out how street‐level bureaucracies impact rights enforcement by distinguishing between allocation, access, and process, and analyzes how social movements intervene in these three aspects. It then focuses on allocation, using the case of French disability policy to analyze the forms of advocacy deployed by movement actors who take part in the rights allocation process at the local level. The article argues that conformity to institutional norms derives not so much from a pressure to conform as from the knowledge and experience of the limited means locally available to make rights effective. Further, it shows how advocacy is reframed from the defense of individual claims to a role of scrutiny and control of the bureaucratic allocation of rights.     

未成年子女利益之保护:意大利法的经验与借鉴

意大利是深受罗马法家父权传统影响的国家,未成年子女一直处于弱势的法律地位。经过理论界若干年的讨论与酝酿,1975年意大利修订了民法典中关于家庭法的部分。非婚生子女与婚生子女的法律地位实现了有限平等化。承认父母子女的利益是各自独立的,而且在存在利益冲突的情况下,诸多的司法判决都认可子女的意愿优先。监护权的行使,受到公权力的监督,无论是剥夺父母的监护权,还是临时性的收养,在监护障碍消除之后,往往还是鼓励孩子回归其原来的家庭。在保护未成年子女利益上,司法积极介入家事特别是父母与子女之间的关系,这点对深受传统思想影响的中国家庭尤其具有借鉴意义。     

Parliamentary Bills of Rights: An Alternative Model?

This paper examines the emergence of a new model for protecting rights (referred to as the 'parliamentary rights' model) in Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the Australian Capital Territory. This parliamentary model is distinguished from the more traditional, judicial-centric, approach to rights protection in at least two ways. The first is that this parliamentary rights model incorporates the notion of legitimate political dissent from judicial interpretations of rights. The second way it challenges the court-centred model is by incorporating the systematic evaluation of proposed legislation from a rights perspective. Both of these features allow for the possibility of a broader range of perspectives on the appropriate interpretation of rights or the resolution of disagreements involving claims of rights than those arising from more judicial-centric bills of rights. The paper assesses whether this alternative approach to rights protection satisfies those sceptics who doubt the virtue or prudence of conceiving of political disputes as legal rights claims for which the judiciary has the dominant role in their interpretation and resolution.     

Pierre Bayle, the Rights of the Conscience, the "Remedy" of Toleration

Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) is often considered one of the staunchest defenders of toleration, especially in the domain of religion. His Commentaire philosophique , published in 1686, one year after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, argued for a broad idea of toleration, to be extended with no exceptions to all sects and religions. However, his thought can hardly be reduced to an exaltation of the "rights of the conscience," for he realized very soon that such an exaltation risks bringing forth religious fanatism, which in turn is the cause of religious wars and acts of violence. Toleration, in these conditions, is only a political remedy for the sickness of the human mind.