This article takes up Foucault's politics of human rights and suggests that it may constitute a point of departure for the renewal of HRE, not only because it rejects the moral superiority of humanism—the grounding for the dominant liberal framework of international human rights—but also because it makes visible the complexities of human rights as illimitable and as strategic tools for new political struggles. Enriching human rights critiques has important implications for HRE, precisely because these critiques prevent the dominance of (...) unreflexive and unproductive forms of HRE that lead toward a declarationalist, conservative and uncritical approach. It is argued that Foucault's critical affirmation of human rights—that is, an approach which is neither a full embrace nor a total rejection—provides a critique that can be disruptive to the conventional HRE approach and creates openings that might renew HRE, both politically and pedagogically. (shrink)

This paper argues that human dignity is a sui generis status principle whose function lies in unifying our normative orders. More fully, human dignity denotes a basic status to be preserved in any institution or process; it is a principle demanding determination in different contexts; and it has its most characteristic application where the legal, moral, and political place competing obligations on individuals. The implication of this account is that we should not seek to reduce human dignity to either a (...) legal norm or a legal principle. (shrink)