scholarly journals Undermining Human Agency and Democratic Infrastructures? The Algorithmic Challenge to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 334-338
Author(s):  
Helmut Philipp Aust
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Universal Declaration ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Automated Decision Making ◽  
Self Learning

“Digital technology is transforming what it means to be a subject.” The increase in the use of big data, self-learning algorithms, and fully automated decision-making processes calls into question the concept of human agency that is at the basis of much of modern human rights law. Already today, it is possible to imagine a form of “algorithmic authority,” i.e., the exercise of authority over individuals based on the more or less automated use of algorithms. What would this development mean for human rights law and its central categories? What does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted seventy years ago as a founding document of the human rights movement at the international level, have to say about this?

“The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness”: The Future of Human Rights Law in the Light of Algorithmic Authority

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-90
Author(s):  
Helmut Philipp Aust
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Machine Learning Algorithms ◽  
Communication Process ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
To Come

The increasing use of big data and machine learning algorithms raises several legal issues. Automated decision-making potentially undermines the very concept of human agency which is central to human rights law. Human agency enables a communication process between those bound by human rights and the rights-holders. To the extent that decision-making processes become fully automatic and autonomous, a form of algorithmic authority would arise. While human rights law is not silent with respect to such processes, doctrinal attempts to come to terms with this development are not very promising. Instead, a political process is required in order to establish a legal framework for the exercise of algorithmic authority.

Human Rights Naturalized

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
World War ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
The Status ◽  
Naturalistic Theory

This chapter helps to confirm the explanatory power of the naturalistic theory of moral progress outlined in previous chapters by making two main points. First, it shows that the theory helps to explain how and why the modern human rights movement arose when it did. Second, it shows that the advances in inclusiveness achieved by the modern human rights movement depended upon the fortunate coincidence of a constellation of contingent cultural and economic conditions—and that it is therefore a dangerous mistake to assume that continued progress must occur, or even that the status quo will not substantially deteriorate. This chapter also helps to explain a disturbing period of regression (in terms of the recognition of equal basic status) that occurred between the success of British abolitionism and the founding of the modern human rights movement at the end of World War II.

scholarly journals Human Rights Law Without Natural Moral Rights

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-232
Author(s):  
Rowan Cruft
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Current System ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Prima Facie Case ◽  
Human Rights Practice

In this latest work by one of our leading political and legal philosophers, Allen Buchanan outlines a novel framework for assessing the system of international human rights law—the system that he takes to be the heart of modern human rights practice. Buchanan does not offer a full justification for the current system, but rather aims “to make a strong prima facie case that the existing system as a whole has what it takes to warrant our support of it on moral grounds, even if some aspects of it are defective and should be the object of serious efforts at improvement” (p. 173).

Part III Structural Principles, Ch.14 Human Dignity

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carozza Paolo G
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Universal Declaration ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Structural Principles ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Right ◽  
International Instruments

This article examines the issue of human dignity in relation to human rights. It analyses the functions and principle of human dignity and its use in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international instruments. It suggests that human dignity seems to help justify expansive interpretations of human rights and strengthens the centrality and importance of the right in question and limiting possible exceptions or limitations to that right. This article also contends that the difficulty of reaching greater consensus on the meaning and implications of human dignity in international human rights law may be attributed to the fact that it refers to both a foundational premise of human rights and to a principle that affect interpretation and application of specific human rights.

scholarly journals Human Rights and the Future of Being Human

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 324-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Huneeus
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Universal Declaration ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Physical Environments ◽  
The Future ◽  
Slow Moving ◽  
Sense Of Urgency

The seventieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) comes at a time of more contestation than usual over the future of human rights. A sense of urgency animates debates over whether the institutions and ideas of human rights can, or should, survive current geopolitical changes. This symposium, by contrast, shifts the lens to a more slow-moving but equally profound challenge to human rights law: how technology and its impacts on our social and physical environments are reshaping the debate on what it means to be human. Can the UDHR be recast for a time in which new technologies are continually altering how humans interact, and the legal status of robots, rivers, and apes alike are at times argued in the language of rights?

Australia and the Abortive Convention on Territorial Asylum: A Case Study of a Cul de Sac in International Refugee and Human Rights Law

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-112
Author(s):  
Savitri Taylor ◽  
Klaus Neumann
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Universal Declaration ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Treaty

Abstract Focusing on the period from the adoption of the 1967 Declaration on Territorial Asylum to the 1977 Conference of Plenipotentiaries on Territorial Asylum in Geneva, this article examines attempts to arrive at an international treaty on territorial asylum. Charting the trajectory of the drafting process, it shows how the ambition of international lawyers and UNHCR to go beyond article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1967 Declaration was eventually thwarted. Australia played a significant role at the 1977 conference and particular attention is paid to the development of its position. The article argues that the discussions over the proposed convention on territorial asylum were symptomatic of States’ unwillingness to countenance a right to asylum, and their concomitant willingness to extend the principle of non-refoulement.

Improvements in Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Profound Change ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Basic Rights ◽  
Human Rights Movement

This chapter examines several momentous improvements in moral understanding, all of which represent impressive gains in inclusiveness. These changes—all of which are embodied in the modern human rights movement—include expansions in understandings of the domain of justice (the class of beings to whom justice is owed) and in the territory of justice (the kinds of actions and states of affairs that can be just or unjust), a redrawing of the distinction between justice and charity, the extension of a broad set of rights to all human beings, the recognition that some basic rights cannot be forfeited, and a profound change in how morality itself is conceived.

Domestic Human Rights Organizations in Africa: Problems and Perspectives

1994 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 30-33
Author(s):  
Makua Wa Matua
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
State Action ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
Negative Rights ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Individual

The modern human rights movement, as it is known today, is largely the product of the horrors of the mainly European war of 1939-45. Its rise is mostly a direct result of the abominations committed by the Third Reich during that war. Drawing on the Western liberal tradition, the human rights movement arose primarily to control and contain state action against the individual. The two principal documents of the movement—the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)—largely establish negative rights that either limit or prohibit altogether government intrusion into the so-called “private realm.”

Part IV Normative Evolution, Ch.21 The Law-Making Process: From Declaration to Treaty to Custom to Prevention

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramcharan Bertrand G
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Law ◽  
Preventive Role ◽  
Law Making

This article examines the international human rights lawmaking process. It analyses the sources and methods for the creation of norms and the transition from declarations and treaties to customary international law. It describes the drafting process for human rights declarations and conventions and offers a number of suggestions on how to improve human rights law-making. These include adopting a greater preventive role in the future and leaving the law-making process in the hands of members of the human rights movement.

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