This thesis seeks to engage with and give answers to the fundamental question of rights interpretation confronting the British judiciary under the Human Rights Act 1998. As a premise, it recognises that the textual openness and consequential semantic uncertainty of the requirements of the Convention rights necessitates their interpretation. In determining the approach the courts should apply, this thesis takes as its structural foundation an analysis of the current approach of the domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights (...) to the five pivotal questions of interpretation: who has rights, the substantive nature of those rights, how rights are to be weighted and balanced in cases of conflict, whether they are rights under a will or an interest conception, and against whom the rights are held? From this basis, the thesis builds upon the existing knowledge to apply Alan Gewirth’s Principle of Generic Consistency to the current judicial position, to critique its compatibility with this principle’s requirements. Through analysis of core settled characteristics of the Convention rights, the substance of the courts’ judgements and the ECtHR’s jurisprudence, and supported by both dialectically necessary and contingent arguments, it is ultimately argued that it is, theoretically and practically, both necessary and possible for the domestic courts to be guided by the PGC in their interpretive approach. Finally, an improved understanding of the principle of human dignity will be advocated as a means through which the domestic courts can apply the PGC’s requirements. By this means, this thesis ultimately proposes an interpretive approach to the Convention rights which gives compelling guidance in answering the fundamental questions of rights interpretation and, by encouraging direct principled engagement with these questions, increases the public understanding of the fundamental nature of rights and the acceptability of the HRA and judgements under it. (shrink)

Alan Gewirth’s claim that agents contradict that they are agents if they do not accept that the principle of generic consistency (PGC) is the supreme principle of practical rationality has been greeted with widespread scepticism. The aim of this article is not to defend this claim but to show that if the first and least controversial of the three stages of Gewirth’s argument for the PGC is sound, then agents must interpret and give effect to human rights in ways consistent (...) with the PGC, or deny that human beings are equal in dignity and rights (which idea defines human rights) or that they are agents (and hence subject to any rules at all). Implications for the interpretation of the international legal system of human rights inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 are sketched. (shrink)

Non-human animal chimeras, containing human neurological cells, have been created in the laboratory. Despite a great deal of debate, the status of such beings has not been resolved. Under normal definitions, such a being could either be unconventionally human or abnormally animal. Practical investigations in animal sentience, artificial intelligence, and now chimera research, suggest that such beings may be assumed to have no legal rights, so philosophy could provide a different answer. In this vein, therefore, we can ask: What would (...) a chimera, if it could think, think about? Thinking is used to capture the phenomena of a novel, chimeric being perceiving its terrible predicament as no more than a laboratory experiment. The creation of a thinking chimera therefore forces us to reconsider our assumptions about what makes human beings (potentially) unique (and other sentient animals different), because, as such, a chimera’s existence bridges our social and legal expectations about definitions of human and animal. Society has often evolved new social norms based on different kinds of (ir)rational contrivances; the imperative of non-contradiction, which is defended here, therefore requires a specific philosophical response to the rights of a thinking chimeric being. (shrink)