Taking Account of Violations: Rethinking Equality and Human Rights

Abstract

What should commitment to the norm of equality mean in human rights discourse? The focus of this article is on the relation between the intrinsically individualistic character of human rights-the fact that they apply to all individuals equally-and the other equalities that human rights discourse, in its broadest sense, has found it necessary to endorse. It is shown how, in order to take fuller account of specific aspects of humanrights-violating behavior that arise in the world as it is, a commitment to the norm of equality in human rights discourse should explicitly mean a commitment to three distinct, competing but interacting principles of equality. It is also shown how, because of the different balances they give to these principles, some influential liberal theories of nondomestic justice fail to properly capture the importance of this interaction to the human rights project at large. To that end, I explore two competing approaches to rights: that favored by some cosmopolitan-liberals and that proposed by John Rawls.What should commitment to the norm of equality mean in human rights discourse? This question is undertheorized within political theory in so far as existing commentaries on the relation between human rights and equality can tend to focus on individualized equality (Buchanan 2005; Wenar 2008). By contrast, the focus of this article is on the relation between the intrinsically individualistic character of human rights-the fact that they apply to all individuals equally-and the other equalities that human rights discourse, in its broadest sense, has found it necessary to endorse.Human rights discourse presupposes a certain kind of equality: namely, equality of status. And, the bearers of human rights themselves are always individuals. But in addition to individualized equality, the kinds of rights claimed for individuals (i.e., cultural and women's rights) and the kind of wider apparatus that is currently affirmed as required to protect these rights globally (i.e., a statist apparatus) presuppose principles of equality among two other categories or classes of subjects: different groups and states.The article has two aims. First, it seeks to show why, in order to take fuller account of specific aspects of human-rights-violating behavior that arise in the world as it is, 1 a commitment to the norm of equality in human rights discourse should explicitly mean a commitment to three distinct, competing but interacting principles of equality. And, second,