PHL 400 Lecture Notes - Catharine Mackinnon, Negative And Positive Rights, Richard Rorty
20 Nov 2013
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There is something inadvertently wrong about assuming natural equality, declarations that. > pragmatic negotiation of infringement of rights vs protection; law in the west has been written by men, written for men until recently = empirical. Crimes of wars, crimes of peace (1933) mackinnon. Declaration of human rights had just taken into account mass rape as crimes against humanity. Behind all law is someone"s story someone whose blood, if you read closely, leafs through. These were selective prosecutions; did not shift the discourse as a whole, just a start. Rape was just a fact of war the lines. The question a question of politics and history and therefore law is whose experience grounds the law. Human rights conversations have the same messy words written (positive law, we are reading them because we are subject to them, not for some divine reason; laws are real and we are bound by them) Confusion of whether human rights are specific articulation is controversial.
