them. For too long, the argument about whether governments should torture has been conflated with the efficacy of torture. The absolutist thinking that accompanies questions about purposefully inflicting pain on a (at the moment, at least) powerless person leaks into arguments about torture’s effects—those who believe one should never torture find themselves easily receiving claims that torture never works, without evidence or reasonably sound logic. This book, in some ways, mirrors the rhetorical brilliance of the early liberal International Relations theorists, who granted Realists their fundamental assumptions about anarchy, and still showed that states should be expected to cooperate in that world. Here, with empirical evidence of some torture efficacy, we can still conclude that torture is an overall bad policy. In this, Hassner has done academics and policymakers a great service. He dared to ask whether torture worked, despite his philosophical abhorrence for it, which he strongly hints at in the epilogue. (And Cornell University Press, to their credit, bravely published it). Let that sink in. An anti-torture individual undertook a rigorous archival exploration that may have led him to a conclusion that would have potentially had dissonant repercussions for his beliefs, to say nothing of the years spent doing the research and writing the book, as well as the potential reputational costs for being incorrectly labeled a torture apologist. But he endeavored to explore anyways. His book, then, has lessons that reach further than torture in the 15th and 16th centuries, or even torture now. It dares us to ask questions that make us and others uncomfortable. It is in these forbidden interstices that science presents the power to uncover greater truths.
{"title":"Human Rights and Justice for All: Demanding Dignity in the United States and Around the World by Carrie Booth Walling (review)","authors":"R. Sanders","doi":"10.1353/hrq.2023.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2023.0020","url":null,"abstract":"them. For too long, the argument about whether governments should torture has been conflated with the efficacy of torture. The absolutist thinking that accompanies questions about purposefully inflicting pain on a (at the moment, at least) powerless person leaks into arguments about torture’s effects—those who believe one should never torture find themselves easily receiving claims that torture never works, without evidence or reasonably sound logic. This book, in some ways, mirrors the rhetorical brilliance of the early liberal International Relations theorists, who granted Realists their fundamental assumptions about anarchy, and still showed that states should be expected to cooperate in that world. Here, with empirical evidence of some torture efficacy, we can still conclude that torture is an overall bad policy. In this, Hassner has done academics and policymakers a great service. He dared to ask whether torture worked, despite his philosophical abhorrence for it, which he strongly hints at in the epilogue. (And Cornell University Press, to their credit, bravely published it). Let that sink in. An anti-torture individual undertook a rigorous archival exploration that may have led him to a conclusion that would have potentially had dissonant repercussions for his beliefs, to say nothing of the years spent doing the research and writing the book, as well as the potential reputational costs for being incorrectly labeled a torture apologist. But he endeavored to explore anyways. His book, then, has lessons that reach further than torture in the 15th and 16th centuries, or even torture now. It dares us to ask questions that make us and others uncomfortable. It is in these forbidden interstices that science presents the power to uncover greater truths.","PeriodicalId":47589,"journal":{"name":"Human Rights Quarterly","volume":"45 1","pages":"352 - 354"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49521144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exporting the European Convention on Human Rights by Maria-Louiza Deftou (review)","authors":"M. Janis","doi":"10.1353/hrq.2023.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2023.0022","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47589,"journal":{"name":"Human Rights Quarterly","volume":"45 1","pages":"358 - 360"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44231078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In other words, there is nothing wrong with the waging of forever wars—against communism, terrorism, and the enemies of freedom—so long as we can feel good about how this is being done and are spared the ugly bits. Fat free, sugar free war enjoyed thousands of miles away from the real consequences. What gives Moyn’s Humane its gravity, and which elevates it above interesting but cynically critical texts in the same vein like Jean Baudrillard’s The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, is the fact that he genuinely believes in an alternative to all this. Drawing deeply on the pacifist tradition of Leo Tolstoy and Bertha von Suttner, Moyn wonders why so much time is spent resigned to making war more humane—and consequently less appalling—and not on the cause of achieving genuine worldwide peace. Written in the aftermath of a 20-year-long failed campaign in Afghanistan and as Russian tanks roll over the Ukrainian plains, it is a very good question. It also isn’t an especially partisan one. While Moyn himself is obviously very much on the left end of the American political spectrum, Humane is very free of the rote biases and mania that characterizes too much commentary on American geopolitics. Indeed, some of the most complex sections of the book involve his deep ruminations of Barak Obama. Initially hailed as a worldwide symbol of progress, preemptively crowned with a Nobel Prize as his tenure had barely begun, Moyn makes no bones about the role of Obama’s administration in perpetuating and even expanding the global war on terror. In an appropriately Tolstoyan manner, Moyn is critical of the 44th President even as he acknowledges how powerless the most powerful man in the world sometimes seemed to advance a cause of peace undoubtedly close to his heart. That fat free, sugar free war has become a structural necessity is one of the grimmer intuitions one gets when reading Humane. There are limitations to Moyn’s book. It would have been nice to see him engage more deeply with the literature defending war, of which there is always a surfeit. This isn’t only for geopolitical reasons. Many find in war everything from an expression of human nature to a catalyst for our most exalted existential projects; including many of the neoconservative intellectuals who cameo in the later parts of Humane. It would have been interesting to see Moyn take a page out of Corey Robin’s playbook and engage this vastly different conceptualizations head on. But these are minor quibbles next to the book’s immense riches. Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War is a remarkable book by an essential scholar. We can only hope that more of us will take Moyn’s dream seriously and give real peace a chance.
{"title":"Anatomy of Torture by Ron E. Hassner (review)","authors":"Ryan M. Welch","doi":"10.1353/hrq.2023.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2023.0019","url":null,"abstract":"In other words, there is nothing wrong with the waging of forever wars—against communism, terrorism, and the enemies of freedom—so long as we can feel good about how this is being done and are spared the ugly bits. Fat free, sugar free war enjoyed thousands of miles away from the real consequences. What gives Moyn’s Humane its gravity, and which elevates it above interesting but cynically critical texts in the same vein like Jean Baudrillard’s The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, is the fact that he genuinely believes in an alternative to all this. Drawing deeply on the pacifist tradition of Leo Tolstoy and Bertha von Suttner, Moyn wonders why so much time is spent resigned to making war more humane—and consequently less appalling—and not on the cause of achieving genuine worldwide peace. Written in the aftermath of a 20-year-long failed campaign in Afghanistan and as Russian tanks roll over the Ukrainian plains, it is a very good question. It also isn’t an especially partisan one. While Moyn himself is obviously very much on the left end of the American political spectrum, Humane is very free of the rote biases and mania that characterizes too much commentary on American geopolitics. Indeed, some of the most complex sections of the book involve his deep ruminations of Barak Obama. Initially hailed as a worldwide symbol of progress, preemptively crowned with a Nobel Prize as his tenure had barely begun, Moyn makes no bones about the role of Obama’s administration in perpetuating and even expanding the global war on terror. In an appropriately Tolstoyan manner, Moyn is critical of the 44th President even as he acknowledges how powerless the most powerful man in the world sometimes seemed to advance a cause of peace undoubtedly close to his heart. That fat free, sugar free war has become a structural necessity is one of the grimmer intuitions one gets when reading Humane. There are limitations to Moyn’s book. It would have been nice to see him engage more deeply with the literature defending war, of which there is always a surfeit. This isn’t only for geopolitical reasons. Many find in war everything from an expression of human nature to a catalyst for our most exalted existential projects; including many of the neoconservative intellectuals who cameo in the later parts of Humane. It would have been interesting to see Moyn take a page out of Corey Robin’s playbook and engage this vastly different conceptualizations head on. But these are minor quibbles next to the book’s immense riches. Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War is a remarkable book by an essential scholar. We can only hope that more of us will take Moyn’s dream seriously and give real peace a chance.","PeriodicalId":47589,"journal":{"name":"Human Rights Quarterly","volume":"45 1","pages":"347 - 352"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46398068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:This article explores the impact of judicial interpretation on legal system change. An analysis of constitutional rights cases and 178 semi-structured interviews with judges, lawyers, and activists shows that judges created opportunities for mobilization for social rights by changing understandings about and uses of pre-existing institutional arrangements, through the contingent exercise of judicial agency. While Colombian judges pointed to interconnectedness of rights, South African judges focused on human dignity. These choices spurred the massive, yet unforeseen, expansion of the tutela procedure in Colombia and precipitated policy-oriented judicial decision-making and “meaningful engagement” in South African constitutional rights litigation.
{"title":"Judicial Agency and the Adjudication of Social Rights","authors":"Whitney K. Taylor","doi":"10.1353/hrq.2023.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2023.0014","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article explores the impact of judicial interpretation on legal system change. An analysis of constitutional rights cases and 178 semi-structured interviews with judges, lawyers, and activists shows that judges created opportunities for mobilization for social rights by changing understandings about and uses of pre-existing institutional arrangements, through the contingent exercise of judicial agency. While Colombian judges pointed to interconnectedness of rights, South African judges focused on human dignity. These choices spurred the massive, yet unforeseen, expansion of the tutela procedure in Colombia and precipitated policy-oriented judicial decision-making and “meaningful engagement” in South African constitutional rights litigation.","PeriodicalId":47589,"journal":{"name":"Human Rights Quarterly","volume":"45 1","pages":"283 - 305"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45548431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:For many human rights scholars, the study of human rights is more than intellectual curiosity; it is the motivation for their work. They try to use their research and expertise to improve human rights conditions and work with policymakers and advocacy groups. This article explores the complexities of partnerships between scholars and human rights organizations and groups (HROGs). Focusing primarily on the experience of social science and humanities scholars with HROGs, we identify a range of collaborations and possible areas of tension in each type of relationship. The immediate goal of the article is to draw attention to the areas of tension in the interest of enabling human rights scholars to develop more fruitful relationships with HROGs. The article also constitutes a critical step toward developing a more formal typology of scholar-organization relationships and formulating concrete hypotheses that can be used to explore variation in human rights outcomes stemming from different types of collaboration, while also identifying best practices.
{"title":"Rights Beyond Words: Mapping Human Rights Scholar-Organization Partnerships","authors":"Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat, S. Hertel","doi":"10.1353/hrq.2023.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2023.0012","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:For many human rights scholars, the study of human rights is more than intellectual curiosity; it is the motivation for their work. They try to use their research and expertise to improve human rights conditions and work with policymakers and advocacy groups. This article explores the complexities of partnerships between scholars and human rights organizations and groups (HROGs). Focusing primarily on the experience of social science and humanities scholars with HROGs, we identify a range of collaborations and possible areas of tension in each type of relationship. The immediate goal of the article is to draw attention to the areas of tension in the interest of enabling human rights scholars to develop more fruitful relationships with HROGs. The article also constitutes a critical step toward developing a more formal typology of scholar-organization relationships and formulating concrete hypotheses that can be used to explore variation in human rights outcomes stemming from different types of collaboration, while also identifying best practices.","PeriodicalId":47589,"journal":{"name":"Human Rights Quarterly","volume":"45 1","pages":"239 - 259"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42279919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"International Human Rights: A Survey by Cher Weixia Chen & Alison Dundes Renteln (review)","authors":"S. McInerney-Lankford","doi":"10.1353/hrq.2023.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2023.0017","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47589,"journal":{"name":"Human Rights Quarterly","volume":"45 1","pages":"342 - 345"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42596685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:This article explores the relationship between distributive justice and transitional justice in post-conflict societies with challenging socioeconomic demands. It revisits the main philosophical debate on distributive justice in the Anglo-American tradition and traces its reception by academics and practitioners in the fields of development, human rights, and transitional justice. The article shows that transitional justice often sets in motion an opportunity conception of distributive justice that revolves around individual responsibility and deservingness, which entails three negative consequences affecting victims and non-victims alike. First, it justifies an unequal guarantee of their economic and social rights; second, it undermines their self-respect; third, it exhausts public support for victim-oriented policies. In so doing, this article distances itself from the existing consensus that transitional justice and distributive justice are different spheres of justice and argues that it is necessary to develop theoretical frameworks that recognize their intimate connection to overcome the pitfalls identified.
{"title":"On Deserving Victims and the Undeserving Poor: Exploring the Scope of Distributive Justice in Transitional Justice Theory and Practice","authors":"Felix E. Torres","doi":"10.1353/hrq.2023.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2023.0015","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article explores the relationship between distributive justice and transitional justice in post-conflict societies with challenging socioeconomic demands. It revisits the main philosophical debate on distributive justice in the Anglo-American tradition and traces its reception by academics and practitioners in the fields of development, human rights, and transitional justice. The article shows that transitional justice often sets in motion an opportunity conception of distributive justice that revolves around individual responsibility and deservingness, which entails three negative consequences affecting victims and non-victims alike. First, it justifies an unequal guarantee of their economic and social rights; second, it undermines their self-respect; third, it exhausts public support for victim-oriented policies. In so doing, this article distances itself from the existing consensus that transitional justice and distributive justice are different spheres of justice and argues that it is necessary to develop theoretical frameworks that recognize their intimate connection to overcome the pitfalls identified.","PeriodicalId":47589,"journal":{"name":"Human Rights Quarterly","volume":"45 1","pages":"306 - 334"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47842820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"To Catch a Dictator: The Pursuit and Trial of Hissène Habré by Reed Brody (review)","authors":"N. Roht-Arriaza","doi":"10.1353/hrq.2023.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2023.0016","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47589,"journal":{"name":"Human Rights Quarterly","volume":"45 1","pages":"335 - 342"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66351245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War by Samuel Moyn (review)","authors":"Matthew McManus","doi":"10.1353/hrq.2023.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2023.0018","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47589,"journal":{"name":"Human Rights Quarterly","volume":"45 1","pages":"345 - 347"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43805785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"New Wine, Old Bottles? A Review of Gabriel Gatti’s Desaparecidos (2022)","authors":"Joseph Wager","doi":"10.1353/hrq.2023.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2023.0021","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47589,"journal":{"name":"Human Rights Quarterly","volume":"45 1","pages":"354 - 358"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47672506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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