New Book: Human Rights, Democracy, and Legitimacy in a World of Disorder, Edited by Gerald L. Neuman and Silja Voeneky
Gerald L. Neuman, HRP Co-Director and J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law and Silja Voeneky, Co-Director of the Institute for Public Law and Professor of Public International Law, Comparative Law and Ethics of Law at the University of Freiburg and former Visiting Fellow at HRP, have published a new edited volume, Human Rights, Democracy, and Legitimacy in a World of Disorder (Cambridge University Press). The book examines how and why the concepts of human rights, democracy, and legitimacy matter in the conditions of international disorder brought about by the 21st century.
Building from an interdisciplinary symposium organized by Professor Voeneky for HRP in 2016, authors’ perspectives draw from philosophy, history, and legal theory. Their contributions explore the role of human rights, democracy, and legitimacy in addressing such problems as economic inequality, access to health care, mass migration, and the catastrophic risks posed by new technologies.
“Which conceptions of rights can help us find legitimate solutions to the new challenges that social and technological change are raising? That is the urgent question that we gathered to debate,” said Neuman.
Professor Neuman authored a chapter on “Human Rights, Treaties, and International Legitimacy,” and HRP Co-Director and Clinical Professor of Law Tyler R. Giannini contributed a chapter on, “Political Legitimacy and Private Governance of Human Rights: Community-Business Social Contracts and Constitutional Moments,” which examines how to maximize human rights protection in situations where a functioning State is largely absent.
Additional contributions come from notable academics, such as Samuel Moyn, Professor of Law and History at Yale University; I. Glenn Cohen, James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law at HLS; Matthias Risse, Professor of Public Policy and Philosophy at the Harvard Kennedy School; and Iris Goldner Lang, Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law and UNESCO Chair on Free Movement of People, Migration and Inter-cultural Dialogue at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Law.
The book is available now as an e-book and in print from October 11, 2018.