Individual Rights

Although scientific enquiry has the potential to cause harm, it can be argued that scientific enquiry should nonetheless be free from formal restrictions. I consider two such arguments, based on the value of knowledge and freedom of expression, respectively. Both, according to my analysis, fail. Instead, I submit that there should be formal restrictions on freedom of scientific enquiry whenever it is deemed likely that such enquiry will lead to violations of fundamental human rights.

This is the PDF-Powerpoint of the paper I exposed on 2 December 2020 during the Webinar HISTORY OF LEGAL SCIENCE: TRANSFORMATION OF IDEAS AND IMAGES, II International Scientific-Methodological Seminar, organised by the Department of History of State and Law of the Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL). The title of the Webinar was: MYTHOLOGEMS OF LAW: IRRATIONAL IN LAW. The title of my paper was: Liberalism, Autonomy, Diversity, and Education: Irrational Reasons. The whole webinar can be watched on YouTube. For further information see on the web-site http://msal.ru/en/news/a-new-impulse-in-legal-science-transformation-of-ideas-and-images/

This review discusses Rousseau's concepts of social contract and general will in his work "The Social Contract" and contrasts those views with the constitutional principles of representation and individual rights found in the United States and other democratic republics.

Open education provides opportunities for the inclusion of different languages in the education context. This conceptual article approaches the concept of language rights from a sociology of language perspective where language rights can be dealt with as group or collective rights. However, in terms of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996), language rights are considered individual rights. Language rights are associated with human rights; therefore, in this article, the human rights culture in South Africa is of importance. In the Constitution, there has been a historical shift from the recognition of two official languages towards the recognition of 11 official languages. The Constitution provides a regulatory framework within which language rights can be interpreted. The approach to language rights in the context of sociology of language and the relationship between language rights and minority and cultural rights provide a background for language rights as group rights. In this article, it is argued that language rights are exercised as individual rights in particular language communities which has implication of open education and open pedagogy.

It is an undeniable fact that globalization has impacted on today`s world in many respects. In company with globalization; remarkable alterations have occurred in the field of political, economic, social and cultural structures. Especially the progress in the field of information and communication technologies is the fundamental factor of these changes.  Due to the rapid change of technologies in addition to the establishment of data bases, many threats have emerged against personal data. This situation required the development of a defence mechanism against surveillance technologies and the necessity of data protection law was perceived.  “Data protection” is the area of law which regulates set of the rules in order to protect personal data. These rules guide companies and organisations in their dealings with the information that identifies individual people.

In the US, almost half of the states have established direct democracy mechanisms, but there is a paucity of such mechanisms at the federal level. By contrast, the Swiss system knows extensive direct democracy at both the cantonal and the federal level, including rights of referendum on laws enacted by the parliament and popular initiatives for constitutional revision. This paper focuses on how direct democracy mechanisms, such as referendums and citizens' initiatives serving an overarching ideal of public sovereignty, may inform and affect judicial review. The paper also examines certain differences in treatment between federal and state laws when it comes to judicial review, as the courts will not necessarily apply the same standards despite the existence of similar democratic mechanisms at both levels. In this contribution, I first argue that none of the existing systems is fully satisfactory. The status quo in the Swiss model might be a source of instability and threaten legal certainty, coherence and transparency and could ultimately be more harmful to public sovereignty in that federal acts may in practice be set aside without constitutional basis. As to the US model, the combination of an absence of citizen involvement at the federal level with extensive judicial review might ultimately be deemed as unsatisfactory from the perspective of democratic rights. This does not mean however that direct democracy is somehow superior to representative, or that either of judicial or legislative power should prevail over the other. To the contrary, in this paper I argue that in a federal system all are complementary. Furthermore, I claim that one should recognise the limits of direct democracy and of judicial review in order to improve both by striking a balance between them.

Surveillance of public areas has been an issue of fierce debate in the previous decades. Today’s advanced technologies are increasingly enabling private and public sector organizations to capture, store, and process information about individuals and their activities. This situation raises important questions about civil liberties, privacy, and ethical conduct while using such technologies.

On the one hand, advantages of CCTVs (Closed Circuit Television Systems) include public safety, crime prevention, reduced levels of fear of crime, and trust for justice. On the other hand, disadvantages of CCTVs involve human rights violations, privacy invasion, and intrusion into the private lives of citizens. From the governments’ and private companies’ perspective, surveillance serves well their pursuit of justice and security. Nevertheless, they cannot capture, process, and store sensitive data while crushing individual rights. Security and civil liberties are not mutually exclusive as long as we strike a fine balance between these values.

This report is composed of two parts. The first part summarizes the data protection rules for visual data in a list of selected countries. The second part centers on individual rights, mainly focusing on the right to private life, the right to control information about oneself, the right to anonymity, the right to secrecy, the right to not being tracked, and the right to be forgotten. By highlighting these rights, this report stresses the importance of following a rights-based approach in processing personal data in order to prevent unnecessary, unlawful, and unethical invasions of privacy and other individual rights.

The “struggle between liberties and authorities”, as described by Mill, refers to the tension between individual rights and the rules restricting them that are imposed by public authorities exerting their power over civil society. In this paper I argue that contemporary information societies are experiencing a new form of such a struggle, which now involves liberties and authorities in the cyber-sphere and, more specifically, refers to the tension between cyber-security measures and individual liberties. Ethicists, political philosophers and political scientists have long debated how to strike an ethically sound balance between security measures and individual rights. I argue that such a balance can only be reached once individual rights are clearly defined, and that such a definition cannot prescind from an analysis of individual well-being in the information age. Hence, I propose an analysis of individual well-being which rests on the capability approach, and I then identify a set of rights that individuals should claim for themselves. Finally, I consider a criterion for balancing the proposed set of individual rights with cyber-security measures in the information age.

Scotto, Pablo (2017), "Derechos individuales y emancipación política: sentido y vigencia de la crítica de Marx", Universitas. Revista de Filosofía, Derecho y Política, nº 26, pp. 2-36.
https://e-revistas.uc3m.es/index.php/UNIV/article/view/3745

RESUMEN: Marx lleva a cabo dos críticas a los derechos. Por un lado, muestra las limitaciones emancipatorias de los derechos de ciudadanía, resultado de la (no reconocida) subordinación del Estado con respecto a la sociedad civil. Por otro, desvela el egoísmo que se esconde detrás de los llamados derechos humanos (libertad, propiedad, igualdad y seguridad), los cuales son en realidad una forma de naturalizar la forma de vida de la sociedad burguesa. Termina por relacionar una crítica con otra, señalando que la emancipación política (el reconocimiento de los derechos de ciudadanía) y el egoísmo sin trabas de la sociedad civil (sancionado a través de los derechos humanos) son dos procesos que tienen lugar a la vez, en el momento en que el ascenso de la burguesía rompe con los mecanismos de la vieja sociedad feudal.

ABSTRACT: Marx carries out two critiques of rights. On the one hand, he shows the emancipatory limitations of citizenship rights, resulting from the (unrecognized) subordination of the State in relation to civil society. On the other hand, he reveals the selfishness that hides behind the so-called human rights (liberty, property, equality and security), which are actually a form of naturalizing bourgeois society lifestyle. He ends up connecting this two critiques, noting that political emancipation (the recognition of citizenship rights) and unfettered selfishness of civil society (sanctioned through human rights) are two processes taking place simultaneously, at the moment when the bourgeoisie social climbing breaks with the mechanisms of old feudal society.

This article argues the text of the Magna Carta, now 800 years old, and reflects many of the values that are at the center of the modern concept of the Rule of Law.  A careful review of its provisions reveals the Magna Carta demonstrates a strong commitment to the resolution of disputes based on rules and procedures that are consistent, accessible, transparent, and fair; and to the development of a legal system characterized by official accountability and respect for human dignity.

The volume is devoted to the relevant problems in the legal sphere, created and generated by recent advances in science and technology. In particular, it investigates a series of cutting-edge contemporary and controversial case-studies where scientific and technological issues intersect with individual legal rights. The book addresses challenging topics at the intersection of communication technologies and biotech innovations such as freedom of expression, right to health, knowledge production, Internet content regulation, accessibility and freedom of scientific research.

People with disabilities due to their physical or psychical limitations cannot fairly and equally participate in human and citizen’s rights. In order to put the principles of equality and social justice into practice such persons shall be given particular assistance from public
authorities. The provision of the art. 69 of Polish Constitution defines the state’s goals and tasks as well as demands from the legislator creating the effective legal tools for supporting people with disabilities in various areas of social life. The paper is an attempt to analyze such provision as a general “programme norm” that any individual right can be derived
from. The concluded considerations on art. 69 are presented in the wider context of the state’s assistance to disabled people - both in comparative and historical aspect.

PDF-PowerPoint presentation of the talk I gave on Monday, 8th July 2019 at the IVR 2019, Dignity · Democracy · Diversity, 29th World Congress of the International Association for Philosophy of Law & Social Philosophy, University of Lucerne, 7-12 July 2019.

This is the PDF-Powerpoint of the paper I exposed on Friday 4 December 2020 during the Webinar HISTORY OF LEGAL SCIENCE: TRANSFORMATION OF IDEAS AND IMAGES, II International Scientific-Methodological Seminar, organised by the Department of History of State and Law of the Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL). The title of the Webinar was: MYTHOLOGEMS OF LAW: IRRATIONAL IN LAW. The title of my paper was: Individual rights, group rights, cultural rights: Genesis and Essence. The whole webinar can be watched on YouTube. For further information see on the web-site http://msal.ru/en/news/a-new-impulse-in-legal-science-transformation-of-ideas-and-images/

This paper begins with a brief discussion of early modernity and the rise of the welfare state, before going on to explore how law and legal regulation change as we enter “late modernity”. The notion of “late modernity” – not to be confused with postmodernity – captures how industrially advanced societies evolve, when globalisation, aided by information technology, accelerates rapidly at the end of the twentieth century. Globalisation speeds up the movement of capital, information, goods, services, people, images and ideas across the globe, thus, dislodging social and cultural norms from their context in time and space. It shifts social and cultural boundaries, enhancing “reflexivity” and social disembeddedness of individuals and collectivises, giving rise to pluralities of values, norms and laws, on the one hand, and to uncertainties, anxieties and “ontological insecurities,” on the other. Enhanced reflexivity – the constant awareness of existing alternative choices, moral standards and modes of action brought on by the consequences of globalisation – offers new possibilities as the agency increasingly frees itself from the normative constraints of institutions. Fuelled by a ubiquitous culture of consumerism and facilitated by digital technology, this heightened reflexivity helps to advance hyper-individualism across society, emphasising individual rights divorced from their corresponding responsibilities and concerns with collective “social good”. This, in turn, destabilises social relations and structures which previously gave a sense of cohesion, permanence and continuity to modernity. What does hold society together and what is the role of law and regulation under the liquid conditions of late modernity? These are among the questions that will guide us through this chapter.

A copy of this paper can be downloaded at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2885893

This article uncovers the constitutional debate over human rights in the lead-up to independence in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, which became modern Botswana. The country's acclaimed liberal-democratic values were born not in an automatic consensus but in a political contest between the two main parties: the Democratic Party and the People's Party. While both expressed at least some support for individual protections, there was a divergence between the People's Party's vision of African communalism and the Democratic Party's commitment to enshrining the private property rights of Europeans. This article argues that, despite Botswana's glowing reputation as a non-racial democracy, its constitutional foundations were heavily shaped by the needs of the white minority. Based on original archival research conducted in Botswana and the United Kingdom, this study offers the first in-depth exploration into the development of the country's bill of rights.

Este artículo presenta el resultado de una investigación que aborda el problema de interpretación y justificación del derecho al Sabbath de los miembros de Comunidades Adventistas del Séptimo Día, desde un marco teórico subordinado a los planteamientos de Ronald Dworkin. Desde una lectura crítica de Taking Rights Seriously y Law’s Empire se desarrolla el objetivo específico que se propone identificar las tesis fundamentales de Dworkin que, seguramente, brindan un enfoque novedoso a la cuestión del Sabbath, cuando ésta supone intereses jurídicos contrapuestos. El enfoque se propone así: se analiza la idea de derechos individuales, luego se revisa el aporte filosófico de Dworkin a la teoría de los casos difíciles, y finalmente se muestra la importancia de adoptar la posición Dworkiniana
frente a la relación moral-derecho.

Political freedom, that is, the rule of law and the protection of human and civil rights, have been the basic pillars upon which the European Union was founded and developed. The EU through its current concrete legal framework has managed to be considered as one of the top intergovernmental organizations with regards to promoting respect and protection of human rights and abiding by its own broad legal obligations in this area. However, recent examples of human rights violations and rule of law turbulent in relatively new member-states, lead the backlash against political freedoms and call into question the extent to which the accession process screens adequately for a commitment to EU values or can truly embed a liberal mindset. The present study provides empirical evidence on the effect of EU accession on political freedom, focusing on whether the structural reforms required by a country to become a member of EU contribute to the protection and the strengthening of rule of law, civil liberties and social rights. Progress through the European Union accession process, and subsequent maturation as an EU member, are correlated with political freedom, as proxied by the Fundamental Rights attribute of the Global State of Democracy Indices. Our findings identify that the key channel most engaged to the EU accession process is the Access to Justice sub-attribute of Fundamental Rights domain. These findings can be deduced from a comparison with some of the most developed countries in the world, OECD member states and signatories of the European Convention of Human Rights, which are not affiliated to the EU.

Pewność prawa jest bardzo szerokim zagadnieniem, które może być analizowane na wielu płaszczyznach. Stanowi ona przedmiot badań teorii i filozofii prawa w ujęciu teoretycznym, porównawczym, ponadnarodowym i praktycznym, jest to żywotny problem prawny takich gałęzi prawa, jak prawo administracyjne, w tym podatkowe, konstytucyjne, karne, cywilne. Tymczasem w tym opracowaniu prezentowana optyka zasady pewności prawa ma charakter ponadnarodowy i unijny, przez pryzmat dwóch zasad – kluczowych tak dla porządku prawnego w UE, jak i dla sytuacji obywateli państw członkowskich.
Po pierwsze, jest to zasada autonomiczności jednostki, wypracowana i utrwalona przez dekady w orzecznictwie europejskim oraz gwarantowana przez skuteczną ochronę praw podmiotów prywatnych wpisaną do prawa UE najwyższej rangi. Podejście to ma wymiar indywidualny, kiedy pewność prawa jest wykorzystywana do ochrony prywatnych interesów obywateli, które już powstały lub mają powstać w przyszłości, poprzez zasady takie, jak powaga rzeczy osądzonej czy ochrona uprawnionych oczekiwań.
Po drugie, jest to obowiązek państw członkowskich do zapewnienia pełnej skuteczności prawa UE (effet utile), realizowany głównie przez gwarancje formalnoprawne zawarte w gwarancjach wynikających z zasady legalności aktów prawa UE oraz z zasady niedziałania prawa wstecz.
Takie ujęcie pozwala jednocześnie na zestawienie obu wartości, którym służy prawo UE oraz na ich wzajemne skonfrontowanie. Docelowo takie zestawienie służyć ma połączeniu teorii prawa UE z rekomendacjami dla praktyki w postępowaniach przed polskimi organami stosującymi prawo UE, tj. w postępowaniach administracyjnych i sądowych. Są to zresztą problemy, które wpisują się w jeden z najnowszych i najbardziej doniosłych prawnie nurtów orzeczniczych TSUE, z decydującymi reperkusjami w orzecznictwie sądów krajowych, w tym na temat wzruszalności ostatecznych decyzji administracyjnych i prawomocnych orzeczeń sądowych. Kwestie te stanowią też jeden z najważniejszych problemów związanych z zasadami równoważenia interesu publicznego i prywatnego, a tym samym zapewnienia równowagi pomiędzy trwałością a elastycznością prawa.
Biorąc to pod uwagę, przedstawione opracowanie ma na celu zbadanie relacji i ustalenie równowagi pomiędzy stabilnością i przewidywalnością prawa dla jednostek wyrażoną przez autonomiczność jednostek i ich prawo o charakterze podstawowym do skutecznej ochrony prawnej a systemowym rozwojem środowiska prawnego w UE, realizowanym poprzez budowanie Unii prawa, z wynikającym stąd zobowiązaniem dla państw członkowskich do zapewnienia pełnej skuteczności normom prawa UE. Wynikiem przeprowadzonych badań jest całościowy ogląd – systematyzacja i uzupełnienie – koncepcji zasady pewności prawa w ujęciu unijnym oraz postulaty dotyczące jej poszanowania w toku stosowania prawa UE w Polsce, co może przynieść wymierne korzyści instytucjom krajowym oraz obywatelom, bo zasada pewności prawa jest jednym z najbardziej skutecznych zabezpieczeń przed arbitralnością władzy, w tym o charakterze ponadnarodowym.

Political freedom, that is, the rule of law and the protection of human and civil rights, have been the basic pillars upon which the European Union was founded and developed. The EU through its current concrete legal framework has managed to be considered as one of the top intergovernmental organizations with regards to promoting respect and protection of human rights and abiding by its own broad legal obligations in this area. However, recent examples of human rights violations and rule of law turbulent in relatively new member-states, lead the backlash against political freedoms and call into question the extent to which the accession process screens adequately for a commitment to EU values or can truly embed a liberal mindset. The present study provides empirical evidence on the effect of EU accession on political freedom, focusing on whether the structural reforms required by a country to become a member of EU contribute to the protection and
the strengthening of rule of law, civil liberties and social rights. Progress through the European Union accession process, and subsequent maturation as an EU member, are correlated with political freedom, as proxied by the Fundamental Rights attribute of the Global State of Democracy Indices. Our findings identify that the key channel most
engaged to the EU accession process is the Access to Justice sub-attribute of Fundamental Rights domain. These findings can be deduced from a comparison with some of the most developed countries in the world, OECD member states and signatories of the European Convention of Human Rights, which are not affiliated to the EU.

This research brings to the forefront the discussion of Individualism and Democracy, correlating the increase of Individualism to Democracy. Additionally, this document uses the countries Israel, Italy, and South Korea as case studies in order to express the objectives of the research. Moreover, in this document, Individualism is defined as the provision and accessibility to Individual Rights within a society—further defining Individual Rights as Political Rights and Civil Liberties. Furthermore, this document analyzes the positive correlation Individualism has with the growth of a country’s overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and GDP per capita. Lastly, this document concludes the research by analyzing the positive correlation of Individualism, GDP, and classes of Democracy.

Introduction

This Dictionary analyses the ways in which the statuses of European citizens are profoundly affected by EU law. The study of one’s particular status (as a worker, consumer, family member, citizen, etc.) helps to reconsider the legal notions concerning an individual’s status at the EU level. The Dictionary includes a foreword by Evgeni Tanchev, Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union, which illustrates some interesting features of the Court’s case law on statuses.
The Dictionary’s core is composed of 79 chapters, published in alphabetical order. Each brief chapter analyses how the individual status was conditioned or created by contemporary EU law, or how the process of European integration modified the traditional juridical definition of the respective status.
The Dictionary provides answers to the following questions: Has the process of European integration modified the traditional juridical definition of individual status? Has the concept of legal status now acquired a new function? What role has EU law played in developing a new modern function for the concept of individual status? Are the selection of a specific individual status by EU law and the proliferation of such statuses, which is synonymous with the creation of new privileges, collectively undermining the goal of achieving substantive equality between EU citizens? Does this constitute a return to the past? Under EU law, is it possible to create a uniform definition of the legal status of the person, over and above the definition that is provided by a given Member State’s legal system?

Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld was an American jurist who published a series of articles that were very important for 20 th century analytical philosophy of right. Since they appeared, it has become common to distinguish between four kinds of right, one for each of the four 'Hohfeldian incidents': privileges (or liberties), claims, powers and immunities. Although Hohfeld's theory has drawn much attention, very little of it has been directed to his concept of duty. In this article, I offer a clarification of this concept that takes into account both Hohfeld's original intentions and the new uses that have been made of his theory. In section I, I analyze and clarify the definition of the concept of duty that we find in Hohfeld (1913) to show that it was employed in order to denote a legal obligation and that this use is purely descriptive. In section II, I discuss what kinds of duties may appear as correlatives of privileges and claims inside a Hohfeldian model. In section III, I conclude with a brief summary of the argument.

This brief note dwells upon the role being played by non class-based left-wing parties and movements in dealing with the contemporary surge in neo-fascist and right-wing radicalism. It suggests that prioritising individual rights over social rights and class-related struggles not only enfeebles popular forces but also tends to strengthen the hand of traditional right-wing and neoliberal agendas.

Lecture at the VIII Course of Legal History - 2020/2021 “Law and Modernization: from the Early Modernity to the Technical Revolution (19th – 20th Century)” | Discussant: Prof. Diego Nunes | Universidad Federal de Santa Catarina
https://iuscommune.paginas.ufsc.br/?lang=en

Este ensayo es un capítulo que forma parte del libro titulado "ESTADO Y VIOLENCIA. RASGOS Y ROSTROS" (ISBN: 978-607-09-2794-2). José L. Cisneros, José L. Estrada y Pedro J. Peñaloza (Coords.). Editorial Porrúa-México.
El objetivo de este capítulo es abordar el contexto contemporáneo que se vive en materia de sistemas de video-vigilancia en las ciudades a nivel global; así como el modelo de gobernanza urbana al cual ello da lugar, examinando si se ajusta (o no) a la noción de la construcción de espacios públicos. Así, con el apoyo de un marco analítico comprehensivo —desde una perspectiva crítica en política pública (urbana)—, se analizan la dinámica institucional que predominaría hoy en dichos espacios urbanos, la dimensión de esa tecnología como un dispositivo político, y el significado del espacio público como una arena contenciosa bajo las condiciones que se estarían presentando. Un diagnóstico sombrío e inquietante que emerge a la luz de esos ejes no impide, sin embargo, que al final se tracen algunas vías para concretar un modelo democrático, abierto y controlable en la política en cuestión.

It has become a commonplace in neo-republican thinking to claim that if the notion of rights can be allowed a place in republican political theory, it can never achieve the prominence that liberalism allegedly grants it. Philip Pettit’s book, Republicanism, provides several arguments to buttress this thesis. This article aims at examining these arguments in order to show that once properly stated, they must on the contrary be considered as powerful arguments to the effect that republicans take rights very seriously.

In the US, almost half of the states have established direct democracy mechanisms, but there is a paucity of such mechanisms at the federal level. By contrast, the Swiss system knows extensive direct democracy at both the cantonal and the federal level, including rights of referendum on laws enacted by the parliament and popular initiatives for constitutional revision. This paper focuses on how direct democracy mechanisms, such as referendums and citizens' initiatives serving an overarching ideal of public sovereignty, may inform and affect judicial review. The paper also examines certain differences in treatment between federal and state laws when it comes to judicial review, as the courts will not necessarily apply the same standards despite the existence of similar democratic mechanisms at both levels. In this contribution, I first argue that none of the existing systems is fully satisfactory. The status quo in the Swiss model might be a source of instability and threaten legal certainty, coherence and transparency and could ultimately be more harmful to public sovereignty in that federal acts may in practice be set aside without constitutional basis. As to the US model, the combination of an absence of citizen involvement at the federal level with extensive judicial review might ultimately be deemed as unsatisfactory from the perspective of democratic rights. This does not mean however that direct democracy is somehow superior to representative, or that either of judicial or legislative power should prevail over the other. To the contrary, in this paper I argue that in a federal system all are complementary. Furthermore, I claim that one should recognise the limits of direct democracy and of judicial review in order to improve both by striking a balance between them.

EN
This article describes how the Covid 19 regulations enhanced some negative factors that already affected the Italian University. It is shown that these measures decreased the authority of scientific research and trust in its results. Science development was furtherly submitted to administrative powers and focus moved from basic theory and free research to technology and economic results. It is suggested that, at last in the field of social sciences, scientific research lost capacity of representing the reality of facts.

IT
Questo lavoro descrive lo stato di crisi dell'Università prima e dopo le misure di contenimento del virus. IN particolare vengono esaminati tre aspetti della crisi, prodotti rispettivamente dal predominio dell' apparato amministrativo sulla comunità scientifica, dalla conseguente perdita di autorità del giudizio (cognitivo) scientifico e dalla trasformazione dell'insegnamento in trasmissione di competenze piuttosto che di conoscenze. Tutti e tre i fattori vengono messi in evidenza ed ulteriormente aggravati dai provvedimenti anti COVID. L' argomentazione al centro del lavoro è che il complesso di questi fattori, ed in particolare la concezione dell'insegnamento come trasmissione ripetitiva di informazioni invece che di 'idee', compromettono la possibilità di esistenza dell' università quale luogo del sapere collettivo e del giudizio cognitivo.

Pulished in L' ircocervo, (20) 2021 n. 1                ISSN 1722-392X

Human rights and people’s rights: dilemma of individual
and collective rights in Latin American countries
Павел Костогрызов*
Abstract: The paper is devoted to the problem of collective and individual rights in Latin American countries. The author points two fundamental controversies of the liberal approach to human rights: first, between individualistic character of human rights and social form of their practicing and guaranteeing; second, between universality of these rights and cultural determinancy of their subject. Then he analyzes Latin American countries’ experience in protecting collective rights and balancing them with the individual ones. The conclusion is drawn that the chellenge facing scientists, politicians and legislators is finding optimal balance between "human rights" and "people’s rights" - individual and collective ones - in such a way as to provide the most favorable legal environment for every human.
Key words: human rights, collective rights, individual rights, indigenous peoples, legal pluralism, legal anthropology, community, Latin America
Resumen: El artículo es dedicado al problema de derechos colectivos e individuales en los paises latinoamericanos. El autor señala dos controversias fundamentales del enfoque liberal de derechos humanos: primero, entre el carácter individualista de los derechos humanos y la forma social de su práctica y garantía; segundo, entre la universalidad de dichos derechos y la determinación cultural de su sujeto. Luego él analiza la experiencia de los países latinoamericanos en protección de derechos colectivos y su equilibrio con los individuales. Se concluye que el desafío al que se enfrentan los científicos, políticos y legisladores es encontrar un equilibrio óptimo entre los "derechos humanos" y los "derechos de la gente", los individuales y los colectivos, de forma que se proporcione el ambiente legal más favorable para cada persona.
Palabras clave: derechos humanos, derechos colectivos, derechos individuales, pueblos indígenas, antroplogía jurídica, pluralismo jurídico, comunidad, América Latina.
Ключевые слова: права человека, коллективные права, индивидуальные права, коренные народы, юридическая антропология, правовой плюрализм, община, Латинская Америка.

This article speculates that at least some constitutional disputes involving the structure of public administration might sometimes be resolved best by attributing to the Constitution’s words their most likely meaning as conventionally understood today, rather than historically. “Extraconstitutional” normative theory, which plays an inevitable role in interpreting the Constitution’s vague individual rights guarantees, may not play as useful a role in separation of powers disputes where the plain meaning of the text seems to yield pragmatically acceptable conclusions.