Liberalism and Minority Rights. An Interview

The interview focuses on Kymlicka's major area of research, i.e., the issue of minority rights. Kymlicka explains why the rights of national minorities have been traditionally neglected in the Western political tradition. He argues that these rights promote individual freedom, and so should be seen as promoting liberal democratic principles. The interview covers many issues including the relationship between ethno-cultural groups and other forms of "identity politics"; how to individuate cultural groups with legitimate claims to minority rights; whether something like a "cosmopolitan view" can seriously challenge the need for minority rights; what are the dangers of building transnational political institutions such as the EU for democratic citizenship; what are the bases of social unity in multination states and what are the limits of toleration of illiberal minorities.     

Contemporary Pluralism and Toleration

The author outlines a conception of toleration as recognition of differences which she argues to be more adequate than current liberal views in order to face issues arising from contemporary pluralism. The liberal conception of toleration as freedom from government's interference in certain areas is appropriate if pluralism is conceived of as a plurality of conflicting conceptions of the good. By contrast, if pluralism is understood as the plurality of groups and cultures, asymmetrically situated in democratic society, then the issues underlying toleration are seen as the contested claim of minorities for asserting their different identity in the public space. Public toleration of differences is thus viewed as a symbolic public gesture of inclusion of the different identities and their bearers into democratic citizenship on an equal footing as members of minority groups. The argument supporting public toleration is so founded on reason of justice.     

Toleration without Liberal Foundations

The author's aim is to find principles grounding and limiting toleration that are sufficiently sensitive to the variety of distinct settings in which concrete problems arise, and to produce principles which can appeal both to liberals and to non-liberals. The range of settings is covered by fixing the nature of three distinct species of the genus right to toleration. Once these rights are analysed, an attempt is made to see what agreement about them can be reached by liberals and non-liberals if they have a common commitment to democracy. A definition of democracy is produced that, it is argued, liberals and non-liberals would have difficulty rejecting. It is then explored as a definition that has definite consequences over the three rights to toleration, putting the opponents before a choice: either to accept their preferred content for the right to toleration, or to support a democratic policy.     

Authority,Nationality, and Minorities

Prominent normative theories for accommodating minority national groups appeal to the value of national cultures and/or the psychology of group recognition. This article aims to show that an argument from political authority provides a better justification. Building on Joseph Raz's theory of authority, the article argues that members of minority national groups are disadvantaged in relation to their majority counterparts under standard democratic institutions; such institutions do not provide minority national groups with comparable access to the conditions for legitimate political authority. Constitutional arrangements for accommodating minority national groups—such as territorial self‐government or power‐sharing—are justified insofar as they might offset this disadvantage.     

Toleration, Liberalism and Democracy: A Comment on Leader and Garzón Valdés

Leader and Garzón Valdés are correct to link toleration to democracy rather than liberalism. However, it is the democratic character of society and the process of democratic decision-making that give rise to a genuine practice of tolerance, not an abstract and regulative ideal of democracy, such as they appeal to. Whereas the latter approach collapses into the standard liberal accounts of toleration both rightly find wanting, the former fits with a republican notion of deliberative democracy. This perspective corresponds to the circumstances of toleration and promotes tolerance as a virtue that is intrinsic both to the nature of democratic debate and to the securing of uncoerced agreement amongst people possessing different beliefs and values. As such, it proves more compatible with pluralism, and hence with toleration, than liberalism.     

Why Tolerate Conscience?

In Why Tolerate Religion?, Brian Leiter argues against the special legal status of religion, claiming that religion should not be the only ground for exemptions to the law and that this form of protection should be, in principle, available for the claims of secular conscience as well. However, in the last chapter of his book, he objects to a universal regime of exemptions for both religious and secular claims of conscience, highlighting the practical and moral flaws associated with it. We believe that Leiter identifies a genuine and important contemporary legal and philosophical problem. We find much to admire in his reasoning. However, we raise questions about two claims that are crucial for his argument. The first claim is that it is not religion as such, but conscience that deserves toleration and respect. The second claim is that respect for religion and conscience demands ‘principled toleration’ but does not entail stronger policies of legal exemptions. Against the first claim, we argue that Leiter does not successfully distinguish religious belief from secular conscience and morality; and he does not explain why secular conscience (which shares many of religious conscience’s epistemic features) deserves respect. Against the second claim, we argue that the most promising theories of legal exemptions are not classical theories of liberal toleration.     

Equality as a Basis for Religious Toleration: A Response to Leiter

In this short essay, I respond to Brian Leiter’s Why Tolerate Religion. I focus on two criticisms. First, I argue that Leiter’s own theory depends on an unacknowledged ideal of equality, and that equality is central to the utilitarian and Rawlsian bases for religious toleration that he draws upon in his book. Second, I argue against Leiter’s allowing, in certain circumstances, the state to establish religion and to promote religious conceptions of the good.     

Groups in Context: An Ontology of a Muslim Headscarf in a Nazareth Catholic School and a Sephardic Ultra‐Orthodox Student in Immanuel

Two separate Israeli Supreme Court cases permitted a Christian school in Nazareth to exclude a Muslim student who insisted on coming to school with her headscarf, and denied an Ashkenazi ultra‐Orthodox school in Immanuel permission to exclude Sephardic students. Intriguingly, the Israeli Supreme Court reached these apparently contradictory holdings using the same liberal ideals of equality and commonality. The article analyzes both holdings to show that the Court's resolutions cannot stand on their own terms. To reconcile these outcomes, we must locate the groups involved within the religious and ethnic power structure in Israel and determine the legal and social significance of defining the group as a minority or a majority. In general, we should be more tolerant of exclusionary measures practiced by a minority than those practiced by the majority. Ultimately, a constitutional evaluation committed to basic individual freedoms cannot refer to the individual without her or his group.     

Toleration and Recognition

The author asks: Is there a case for redefining toleration as the recognition of excluded identities? He is inclined to answer no. Liberal democratic states, should of course recognise disfavoured groups by registering the normality of their members and the justice of their claims but must resist recognition in any stronger sense. Appropriate recognition consists in confronting the live contemporary issues of exclusion and of ethnic and national injustice by compensatory policies and constitutional innovations.     

Freedom of Conscience and Observance of the Laws on Religious Denominations

Freedom of conscience is one of the most important democratic institutions in the Soviet state. The basic content of that institution lies in the citizen's right not to profess any religion or to profess any religion whatever; the freedom to perform religious rites to the degree that this does not involve disturbance of public order and does not infringe upon the personal rights, honor and dignity of citizens; and the freedom to carry on antireligious propaganda in ways that do not offend the religious sentiments of believers.     

Jewish–Gentile intermarriage in pre-war Amsterdam

Intermarriage is generally regarded as the litmus test in the process of assimilation of ethnic-minority groups. The Jewish community in Amsterdam was a religious minority. When a Jew married a Gentile it was assumed that Judaism lost a family. Odds ratio calculations based on marriage tables for 1911–1941 show that the rate of intermarriage among Jews was much lower than among Catholics, Protestants and religious unaffiliated. Although the Jewish community might still be more homogeneous than the Protestant and Catholic communities, it was rapidly assimilating as the log odds ratios for Jews dropped more heavily. While mutual aversion is reflected in the remaining high log odds ratios for Jewish–Catholic marriages, Jewish–Protestant marriages and Jewish–unaffiliated marriages increased because of the higher propensity among Protestants to marry a Jew and the higher propensity among Jews to marry an unaffiliated spouse from the 1920s onwards. Next, we created life courses for a sample of 480 descendants from Jewish grandparents living in Amsterdam in 1941 of whom we know were married to a Gentile or to a Jew. The collected data from the Amsterdam registry allow us to test several hypotheses on preferences, opportunities and third parties in a logistic regression analysis. One's own affiliation significantly influenced the preference to marry a Gentile or a Jew. Successive marriage cohorts showed a higher chance to marry a Gentile among those who had Jewish parents at birth. A similar but weaker effect is found for those born in the old Jewish neighborhood. These differences in effect on later marriage cohorts indicate that religious and social barriers within the Jewish community had largely diminished. Opportunities like the social network of the mother and the living district during one's adolescents' age also significantly influenced the choice of a spouse.     

Jewish–Gentile intermarriage in pre-war Amsterdam

Intermarriage is generally regarded as the litmus test in the process of assimilation of ethnic-minority groups. The Jewish community in Amsterdam was a religious minority. When a Jew married a Gentile it was assumed that Judaism lost a family. Odds ratio calculations based on marriage tables for 1911–1941 show that the rate of intermarriage among Jews was much lower than among Catholics, Protestants and religious unaffiliated. Although the Jewish community might still be more homogeneous than the Protestant and Catholic communities, it was rapidly assimilating as the log odds ratios for Jews dropped more heavily. While mutual aversion is reflected in the remaining high log odds ratios for Jewish–Catholic marriages, Jewish–Protestant marriages and Jewish–unaffiliated marriages increased because of the higher propensity among Protestants to marry a Jew and the higher propensity among Jews to marry an unaffiliated spouse from the 1920s onwards. Next, we created life courses for a sample of 480 descendants from Jewish grandparents living in Amsterdam in 1941 of whom we know were married to a Gentile or to a Jew. The collected data from the Amsterdam registry allow us to test several hypotheses on preferences, opportunities and third parties in a logistic regression analysis. One's own affiliation significantly influenced the preference to marry a Gentile or a Jew. Successive marriage cohorts showed a higher chance to marry a Gentile among those who had Jewish parents at birth. A similar but weaker effect is found for those born in the old Jewish neighborhood. These differences in effect on later marriage cohorts indicate that religious and social barriers within the Jewish community had largely diminished. Opportunities like the social network of the mother and the living district during one's adolescents' age also significantly influenced the choice of a spouse.     

The Politics of Difference: Statehood and Toleration in a Multicultural World

The author identifies four possible attitudes of tolerance toward groups with different ways of life: resignation, indifference, curiosity and enthusiasm. He explores the potential for these attitudes and concludes by discussing the role of boundaries within communities in modernism and postmodernism. The author is not going to focus on toleration of eccentric or dissident individuals in civil society; he is interested in individual rights primarily when they are exercised in common—in the course of voluntary association or religious worship or cultural elaboration—or when they are claimed by groups on behalf of their members.     

Parliamentary Consociationalism in Lebanon: Equal Citizenry vs. Quotated Confessionalism

This article sheds light on the governance dilemma in a deeply divided post-conflict Lebanese sectarian society undergoing democratic transition. It assesses consociational democracy as a working model institutionalised by Lebanon in light of the country's composition of multiple religious minorities. In particular, it focuses on the political forces shaping the current Lebanese National Assembly (parliament) within the confessional structure and analyses the prospect and impasses confronting the development of a stable and representative assembly. Analysis of the Lebanese parliament is made in light of five assessment areas identified as fundamental for the emergence of a stable democratic institution: political will and domestic support, representation, lawmaking, oversight, and management and infrastructure. After revealing the deep-rooted deficiency of quota-based confessional representation, the article provides institutional transitional reform recommendations that could increase the likelihood for the legislature to better fulfil the critical functions of representation, oversight, and lawmaking vital for democratic transition. The realisation of consociational democracy in Lebanon, the article argues, would require the eventual adoption of proportional representation as a means of moving the country from a ‘confessionally quotated’ to ‘equal citizenry’ based representation.     

Judicial Responsiveness to Valence Issues: An Event History Analysis of the Initial Sex Offender Registration and Notification (SORN) Laws

Under what conditions does judicial responsiveness to the public's policy preferences compromise the court's role as a countermajoritarian institution? Scholars have yet to examine whether and how quickly state appellate court justices respond to valence issues. This study investigates the relationship between retention elections and judicial responsiveness to the initial sex offender registration and notification (SORN) laws popularized in the 1990s. Findings show that judges who participated in nonpartisan retention elections exhibited greater democratic accountability by engaging in judicial review of SORN laws earlier than judges in other retention election systems. Valence issues create political challenges for nonpartisan judges who, like their counterparts in other retention systems, are expected to balance majoritarian interests with minority rights.     

Does religion count for religious parliamentary representation? Evidence from Early Day Motions

The article addresses one facet of the representation puzzle, namely substantive minority representation in the UK House of Commons. It examines whether a religious Jewish and Muslim minority background stimulates politicians from these backgrounds to address issues of concern for Jewish and Muslim minority groups in Early Day Motions (EDMs), and compares the effects from identity-based and institutional predictors. The study draws upon previous studies that used low-cost parliamentary activities to assess the impact of gender and ethnic minority identities on the representation of women and ethnic minorities, employing quantitative content analysis and time-series cross-sectional data analysis to examine the content of EDMs sponsored by members of parliament from Jewish and Muslim background (plus a control group) between 1997 and 2012. The analyses test for the effects of religious background and institutional predictors on the likelihood of referring to minority issues. They show that identity-based predictors such as a religious background are vastly inferior to institutional factors, including a legislative role, representing a constituency with a significant proportion of minority population, and the length of parliamentary service, in determining such references.     

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.     

Democracy: A Convergent Value? Comments on Sheldon Leader and Ernesto Garzón Valdés

In this paper, the author contends that Leader's attempt to ground the value of toleration on a common understanding of democracy faces a number of fundamental obstacles. Such obstacles could only be overcome if both liberals and their opponents were to reach an agreement on the value of democracy and thereby converge in their support of toleration. The author shows that far from providing a common ground that liberals and their opponents can share, the so-called "shareable understanding" of democracy appeals primarily to liberals. The author also argues that Garzón Valdés's thesis that democracy is the system best suited to the flourishing of toleration faces the same kind of difficulty, namely, that not every group in a liberal constitutional regime can be convinced of the priority of democratic principles over their other fundamental value-commitments.     

评财产权劳动学说

本文首先介绍了洛克的财产权劳动学说并略作评价。接着作者就知识产品作为财产权客体的新情况 ,指出财产权劳动理论也为知识产权的权利确定与保护提供了合法性基础。稍后 ,文章讨论了财产权的私有性质。最后 ,作者“重申自由主义 ,认为财产权劳动说本身以人为中心 ,过分强调法律社会化将会损害作为人类生存与发展基础的‘自由主义’”。