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Title: Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse by Mary Ann Glendon ISBN: 0-02-911823-9 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: August, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Individualism versus reality
Comment: Glendon puts into perspective the overuse of the idea of individual "rights" and how the emphasis in our legal system not only leads to absurdity, but to the inability of society to discuss very real social problems.
As she puts it (I paraphrase) this discourse is based on the way few men, and fewer women, actually live. For we all live in a complex milieu of family and friends and neigbors, not in isolation.
I especially like her dissection of Rousseau's "primitive man" and how this idea has become the distorted, (again I paraphrase) insisting that when these philosophers discussed the freedom of the primitive man, they somehow neglected to realize that they never bothered to see how the primitive woman or child fit into his life--or into their own life.
This argument is the basis for communitarian ideas, not socialism.
And in an "either or" type argument too often seen in discussions of rights (society versus individual rights) she posits a "but": the idea of individual rights in a complex society where these things are balanced by others, not eliminated.
Rating: 4
Summary: An Evenhanded Critique of Rights
Comment: Rights talk is ubiquitous in American culture; from the highest political office holder to the lowest convenience store clerk, people invoke rights, often in absurdly stark and overbroad forms, as a way of expressing their desires, interests, and moral and political views. Often such rights claims lead people to say things that are clearly false and/or absurd, such as that they have the right, without qualification, to do whatever they want whenever they want. This custom is made all the more curious by the fact that people seem to know so little about rights themselves. What are rights? Where do they come from? Who has what rights, and how can you tell? When posed with such questions even some rights theorists fall silent.
The curious nature of American rights talk has led an increasing number of people to reject the existence of rights altogether. Rights have, of late, come under serious sustained attack from a variety of quaters, and it's hard not to feel a little sympathy with such critiques. Talk to a guy who thinks you have an absolute sui generis right to own a sub-machine gun a few times, and you will begin to understand why Bentham called rights "nonsense on stilts." Still, rights, and rights talk, lay at the heart of our republic, as well as of the recent attempts to hold foreign dictators to universal moral standards. It would be most unfortunant if a concept that has done so much good in the world turned out to be incoherent.
According to Glendon's book, the problem it not with rights themselves, but with what she calls the "American rights dialect," the particular way in which we speak of rights here and now. She argues that contemporary American rights talk is separated both from the European tradition, and from the tradition of the founding fathers, not only in its simplicity, but also in its extreme individualism, absoluteness, insularity, and inarguability. American rights talk ignores the connections (logical and moral) that rights have with duties, it denies the social and communal aspects of people, and it rejects the need for rights to be limited according to various circumstances. In effect American rights discourse has become a parody of itself, leaving it vulnerable to attack from those who would deny rights altogether.
It's clear from Glendon's other works (e.g. A World Made New) that she does believe in rights. While this book is largely critical of rights talk in its current form, it should be viewed, I think, fundamentally as an attempt to restore rights to their proper place in our political framework, lest we get fed up with the whole thing and throw out baby with bathwater. For this reason I would recommend this book both to advocates and opponents of rights. The former will emerge from it with a fuller deeper understanding of how rights work, while the later may discover that there is more to rights than they had previously thought.
Rating: 4
Summary: an interesting, worthwhile read
Comment: I very much enjoyed reading this book & I think I gained much from doing so. Although a lot of space is devoted by the author to anticipating & shooting down arguments those who don't agree with her might offer, she does get her points across rather well. She has a lot to say about the fact that lawyers & judges seem to love talking about rights while they have little to say about obligations. Some of the facts she reports are shocking to read & make it very easy to understand why so many people have so little respect for the legal profession. I must confess I had great difficulty in trying to paraphrase Ms Glendon's assertion, maybe because, as Ms Glendon explains, our court decisions entered a different world, so to speak, in the 1960s period. I strongly recommend the book for anyone interested in the humanities.
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Title: Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age by Benjamin R. Barber ISBN: 0520056167 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: October, 1985 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes by Stephen Holmes, Cass R. Sunstein ISBN: 0393320332 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values by Nancy Folbre ISBN: 1565847474 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy by Michael J. Sandel ISBN: 0674197453 Publisher: Belknap Pr Pub. Date: April, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.45 |
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Title: Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization (Language and Legal Discourse) by Michael W. McCann ISBN: 0226555720 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: June, 1994 List Price(USD): $32.50 |
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