Friday, January 31, 2014

Verdirame: Rescuing Human Rights from Proportionality

Guglielmo Verdirame (King's College London – Law) has posted Rescuing Human Rights from Proportionality (in Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, Cruft, Liao, Renzo eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:
The principle of proportionality has enjoyed extraordinary success over the last decades: it has become a staple of international and constitutional adjudication on fundamental rights; it has been espoused by civil and common law judges alike, and described as the “principle of principles” and the “ultimate rule of law”. But what does proportionality mean for the idea of human rights? Can it be based on anything other than a utilitarian conception of rights?