Institutionalising values: beyond human rights?

政治、法律和社会机构能够服务的一个中心目标是实现- -保护、促进和培育- -基本的人类价值。但是，我们如何才能建立和维持能够很好地服务于这一目的的机构呢？它们的建设和运行应该遵循什么原则？该网络将汇集一个由哲学家、政治和法律理论家、政策制定者和法律实践者组成的国际团队，以解决这些问题，这些问题只有通过涉及理论家和实践者的彻底跨学科方法才能充分解决。在争取人权委员会经费的期间，该网络将侧重于人权问题。在我们当代以权利为主导的气候中，价值观的制度化通常被理解为与人民人权的执行有关。最近出现了以权利为基础的机构重组建议，从Pogge提议的国际资源和借款特权改革（2002年）到Fabre关于出售身体部位的建议（2006年）。学术界的建议与政策制定者对权利相关机构的重组相匹配——例如，在英国法律中确立《欧洲人权公约》（1998年），建立民事伙伴关系（2004年），苏格兰议会（1999年）和中国香港的下放自治（1997年）。虽然学术界和政策制定者对每项改革都进行了单独的研究，但对指导任何旨在将基本价值观制度化的改革的一般原则，却鲜有批判性的关注。特别是，人权话语在这些改革中的核心作用迫切需要国际跨学科的关注。诉诸人权的语言是有争议的。例如，确立一项享有爱的教育的人权，可以说是忽视了家庭等法外机构，并错误地将机构与它们所保护的价值观之间的关系视为纯粹的工具性的。批评者还经常指责人权倡导者及其制度化是“西方帝国主义”。目前迫切需要的是对人权在基本价值观制度化中所能发挥的作用进行建设性的批判性审查：但目前关于人权的辩论通常过于有限和过于片面，无法提供这一点。人权的批评者和捍卫者跨越了各种各样的传统，彼此之间很少互动，因此他们往往似乎在谈论过去而不是彼此，而现有的国际人权网络主要涉及完全支持这种话语的法律和非政府组织活动家。相比之下，我们提议的网络将把来自法律和哲学以及不同知识传统的批评者，以及来自国际学术界和实践者的跨学科人权捍卫者聚集在一起，从跨文化知情的规范角度对人权进行批判性审查。在人权理事会资助的网络阶段之后，我们将进一步发展项目，扩大我们的重点，以涵盖从我们最初的人权网络讨论中产生的问题，这些问题涉及价值制度化的一般问题，例如设计能够适当尊重（非？）人权普遍性和其他价值观的机构；美学和环境规范的制度化，不能被人权方法所容纳；个人对实现价值的制度的责任；法律和次法律机构在实现不同价值方面的适当作用。斯特林大学将成为ahrc资助的网络阶段的基地。公众对该网络的参与将通过非政府组织Jubilee Scotland进行调解。

One central purpose that political, legal and social institutions can serve is the realisation - the protection, the promotion, the fostering - of fundamental human values. But how can we create and maintain institutions that will serve this purpose well? What principles should guide their construction and operations? This network will bring together an international team of philosophers, political and legal theorists, policy-makers and legal practitioners to address these questions, which can be adequately tackled only through a thoroughly interdisciplinary approach involving both theorists and practitioners. During the period for which AHRC funding is sought, the network will focus on human rights. In our contemporary rights-dominated climate, the institutionalisation of values is commonly understood as concerning enforcement of people's human rights. There has been a recent flowering of rights-based proposals for re-structuring institutions, from Pogge's proposed reforms to the international resource and borrowing privileges (2002) to Fabre's proposals on the sale of body parts (2006). Academics' proposals have been matched by policy-makers' restructuring of rights-related institutions - e.g. the entrenchment of the European Convention on Human Rights in UK law (1998), and the creation of civil partnerships (2004), of the Scottish parliament (1999) and of devolved self-government for Hong Kong within China (1997).While each reform has been examined individually by academics and policy-makers, there has been little critical focus on the general principles that should guide any reform intended to institutionalise fundamental values. In particular, the central role of human rights discourse in these reforms urgently requires international cross-disciplinary attention. Recourse to the language of human rights is contested. For example, instituting a human right to a loving upbringing arguably ignores extra-legal institutions such as the family, and mistakenly takes the relation between institutions and the values they protect to be purely instrumental. Critics also frequently accuse advocates of human rights and their institutionalisation of 'Western imperialism'. What is urgently needed is a constructively critical examination of the role that human rights can properly play in the institutionalisation of fundamental values: but current debates about human rights are usually too limited and too partial to provide this. Critics and defenders of human rights span a diversity of traditions that rarely interact with each other, so that they too often seem to talk past rather than to each other, while the existing international human rights networks largely involve legal and NGO campaigners who fully support the discourse. By contrast, our proposed network will subject human rights to critical scrutiny from a trans-culturally informed normative perspective, by bringing together critics from law and philosophy, and from different intellectual traditions, along with cross-disciplinary defenders of human rights drawn internationally from both the academy and practitioners.Following the AHRC-funded stage of the network, we will develop further projects, broadening our focus to encompass questions - arising from our initial human rights network discussions - concerning general issues about the institutionalisation of value, such as the design of institutions that can appropriately respect the (non?)universality of human rights and other values; the institutionalisation of aesthetic and environmental norms that cannot be accommodated by the human rights approach; the individual's responsibility in relation to value-realising institutions; the appropriate role for legal and sub-legal institutions in realising different values.The University of Stirling will be the base for the AHRC-funded stage of the network. Public engagement with the network will be mediated through the NGO, Jubilee Scotland.