Against future generations Humphreys, Stephen
European journal of international law,
12/2022, Volume:
33, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Future generations are invoked in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and increasingly often in climate debate, as a locus of responsibility for present generations. In this ...article, I argue against this framing. I look at the historical context and rhetorical effects of a generational frame for both present and future generations, dwelling in particular on guiding conceptions of sacrifice and legacy as well as on the construction of future scenarios and the practice of future discounting. I conclude that the appeal to future generations obfuscates, rendering a series of critical boundaries diffuse, and, in doing so, abjures concrete urgent existing responsibilities towards those alive today in the same gesture that nominally assumes them for an abstract unformed future.
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A cartoon in the 'New Yorker' on 12 July 2023 with the title 'Solve That Problem!' depicts two besuited older white men on a game show panel before whom a microphoned compere intones: 'The clock is ...ticking - will you solve the problem or pass it on to future generations, Congressman?' The obvious appeal of the joke is the starting point for an article I recently published in this journal, titled 'Against Future Generations': the invocation of future generations is intuitive and powerful, even visceral. Of course we want the congressmen to 'solve the problem' and not pass it on to 'future generations'. But in this move - a niggling feeling I had - we may miss something: the problem is ours - it is a problem in the present. What, actually, do future generations have to do with it? And if we do take 'future generations' seriously - to pursue the point - which future generations, where and, not least, when? How are 'their' interests and concerns any different to 'ours', globally, today? If they are somehow different, wherein lies the distinctiveness? If they are not, why raise them at all? Who are they anyway? Is there, in fact, a 'they' there? (I mean 'there'?) And who are 'we'?
Equity before 'equity' Humphreys, Stephen
Modern law review,
January 2023, Volume:
86, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The notion of 'equity' is undergoing conceptual repositioning in international law today, embracing individuals as well as states and gaining an association with human rights and the politics of ...protest. In the context of these developments, the present paper enquires into the premodern roots of this ancient and rich term through three historical vignettes: first, the emergence of aequitas in Roman law - as a source of law anchored in analogy and empathy - and in particular its relevance to the ambiguous status of slaves; second, the importance of 'natural equity' to the consolidation of 'natural rights' during the Franciscan poverty debate in 14th century Europe, and finally, 'common equity' in the rights-based constitutional order proposed by the Levellers in 1640s England. In its root sense, I conclude,what we might call 'radical equity' has historically lent itself to trenchant critique of the law, centred on the individual as subject of right.
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Theatre of the Rule of Law presents a sustained critique of global rule of law promotion - an expansive industry at the heart of international development, post-conflict reconstruction and security ...policy today. While successful in articulating and disseminating an effective global public policy, rule of law promotion has largely failed in its stated objectives of raising countries out of poverty and taming violent conflict. Furthermore, in its execution, this work deviates sharply from 'the rule of law' as commonly conceived. To explain this, Stephen Humphreys draws on the history of the rule of law as a concept, examples of legal export during colonial times, and a spectrum of contemporary interventions by development agencies and international organisations. Rule of law promotion is shown to be a kind of theatre, the staging of a morality tale about the good life, intended for edification and emulation, but blind to its own internal contradictions.
As the effects of climate change continue to be felt, appreciation of its future transformational impact on numerous areas of public law and policy is set to grow. Among these, human rights concerns ...are particularly acute. They include forced mass migration, increased disease incidence and strain on healthcare systems, threatened food and water security, the disappearance and degradation of shelter, land, livelihoods and cultures, and the threat of conflict. This inquiry into the human rights dimensions of climate change looks beyond potential impacts to examine the questions raised by climate change policies: accountability for extraterritorial harms; constructing reliable enforcement mechanisms; assessing redistributional outcomes; and allocating burdens, benefits, rights and duties among perpetrators and victims, both public and private. The book examines a range of so-far unexplored theoretical and practical concerns that international law and other scholars and policy-framers will find increasingly difficult to ignore.
The present paper takes as its moniker an assertion of that theologian-cum-state theorist, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel saw the Reformation as a moment of transition from dogma to reason in ...religion, concomitant with the establishment of the modern secular state in Europe. This paper will argue that whereas human rights appear as the ethical content or desire of the rational state, they do not offer a simple corollary or complement of religion; indeed they tend to reverse or negate principles that are central to most major religions. The argument is straightforward: I suggest that core religious symbologies of obligation and community—the obligation of one toward another and the community in God—are vacated in human rights. Human rights transform relations of obligation into systems of ownership and debt (I am no longer obliged to you; rather you are indebted to me). They idealise a relation between the state and the individual that is fundamentally hostile to notions of community. The argument proceeds under four headings: first I look at ‘freedom’—drawing on Hegel for the thesis that human rights be read as a vehicle of religious ethics in a secular state. Second, I refer to Freud and Levinas for the sense of the divine expressed through (or manifest in) guilt and ‘obligation’; I contrast briefly the religious expression of these notions with that found in human rights discourse. Third, a section on ‘community’ argues that this is not merely ignored in human rights discourse, it is actively undermined. Finally, I look at the contemporary practice and theory of human rights envisaged as a system of self and sovereignty channelled through ‘law’ and the state. The argument does not assume incompatibility between human rights and religion as matters of personal belief—it does however identify rivalry between the normative directives on behaviour and self-understanding that inform each as a matter of practice. در مقالة حاضر، گفتهای از متکلم و نظریه پرداز حکومتی، جورج ویلهِلم فردریش هِگِل در صدر مقاله آمده است. هگل اصلاحات را گذاری از جزم گرایی به سمت عقلانیت در دین میدانست که با تثبیت حکومت نوین سکولار در اروپا همزمان گردید. این مقاله استدلال مینماید که گرچه حقوق بشر به عنوان تمایل یا محتوای اخلاقی حکومت عقلانی نمودار میگردد، اما پیامد یا مکمّلی را برای دین ارائه نمیدهد. در واقع این حقوق غالباً اصول محوریِ اکثر ادیان عمده را نقض یا نفی میکنند. استدلال مربوطه آشکار است: به نظر من نمادهای اصلی دینی یعنی تکلیف و وحدت ـ تکلیف یکی نسبت به دیگری و وحدت با خداوند ـ در حقوق بشر کنار گذاشته میشوند. حقوق بشر روابط تکلیفی را تبدیل به نظامهایی از مالکیت و دِین میکند (من دیگر نسبت به تو تکلیفی ندارم؛ بلکه تو به من مدیونی). این حقوق رابطهای را بین دولت و فرد به گونهای آرمانی نشان میدهد که اساساً با مفاهیم وحدت مغایر است. این استدلال تحت چهار عنوان پیش میرود: نخست من نگاهی به آزادی دارم ـ و از نظریات هِگل در این مورد استفاده میکنم که حقوق بشر باید ابزاری برای اخلاقیات دینی در یک حکومت سکولار تلقی شود. ثانیاً من برای مفهوم جلوة الاهی در قالب گناه و تکلیف، به فروید و لِویناس اشاره میکنم؛ من مختصراً بیان مذهبی این مفاهیم را با آنچه در گفتمان حقوق بشر یافت میشود مقایسه میکنم. ثالثاً بخشی از مقاله در باب «جامعه» استدلال مینماید که این مفهوم در گفتمان حقوق بشر صرفاً نادیده گرفته نمیشود، بلکه فعالانه تضعیف میگردد. نهایتاً من نگاهی به نظریه و عملگروی حقوق بشر در قالب نظامی از خویش و حاکمیت از طریق قانون و حکومت خواهم داشت. این استدلال ناسازگاری بین حقوق بشر و دین را به عنوان موضوعاتی مربوط به اعتقاد فردی در نظر نمیگیرد، با این وجود رقابت بین رهنمودهای هنجاری در مورد رفتار و خودشناسی را که در حوزة عمل بر هر یک تأثیر میگذارد، تشخیص میدهد.
Climate justice: the claim of the past Humphreys, Stephen
Journal of human rights and the environment,
06/2014, Volume:
5, Issue:
Special
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This synthetic appraisal of the collection of papers in this issue argues that historical injustice saturates the problem of climate change. Those most vulnerable to climate change today are largely ...those who already lack resources – who have been on the wrong end of colonial history, or who have been globalization's losers, or who have suffered neglect, exclusion or simple rapacity at the hands of their own governments. They are those who have benefitted little or not at all from a carbon-intensive global economy, but who have long suffered its side effects – resource stripping, food price spikes, impoverishment and now the ravages of climate change. Following the other authors in this issue – and examining human rights law, trade law and the overarching ideal of the rule of law – the paper notes that the particular form taken by law in international and transnational affairs, having largely followed the historical progress of industrialism, colonialism and globalization, is peculiarly ill-suited to the task of addressing this vulnerability.
The authors identify boundaries for the following Earth-system domains: climate; surface-water and groundwater integrity; the functional integrity of the biosphere; the extent of natural ecosystem ...area; the phosphorus and nitrogen cycles; and aerosol density (see Fig. 1 of the paper3). The doughnut hole represents a lower bound to resource use (termed the 'access foundation' by Rockström and colleagues), and the edge of the doughnut is defined by the planetary boundaries. The goal is to find a common language in which to express the fragility of Earth's system in the face of human impacts, as well as the point at which the resulting harm to human and non-human well-being, from the point of view of both environmental change and policies to address it, becomes unacceptable.
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