Natural law, human rights and women's rights: an investigation into the foundations and limitations of appeals to women's rights outside the law

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Since the end of the Cold War, human rights language has become the dominant discursive framework within which issues of ethics, politics and international law are debated and contested. There is a widespread acceptance of the concept of universal human rights, even although this has paradoxically occurred at a time when postmodernism has called into questions all values and practices based on appeals to universal values or norms. Human rights theorists and practitioners continue to debate the extent to which the concept of human rights may be 'nonsense on stilts' (Jeremy Bentham), a pragmatic ethical system which abandons the quest for foundations in favour of 'sentimental education' designed to inculcate western democratic values into societies and individuals (Richard Rorty), or a concept which is implicitly dependent upon theological perspectives associated with natural law and divine justice (Michael Perry). This research project examines the natural law tradition and its relationship to human rights theory and law, with a particular emphasis on questions of women's rights. It argues that natural law theology and philosophy provide a resource for reflection on the relationship between law, rights, gender and justice, while affirming the affinity between humankind and the natural world in a way which has implications for environmental concerns and the understanding of nature.The project looks at historical concepts of natural law from their origins in ancient Greek thought, through the medieval scholastic tradition, to post-Enlightenment theories of natural rights and modern theories of human rights. It explores the problematic positioning of women before the law, using Antigone and the French revolutionary Olympe de Gouges as examples. By showing how these women appealed to a higher concept of justice based on divine law to challenge existing laws, it asks to what extent modern feminist theorists might discover a resource for thinking through issues of women's human rights in relation to law, society and nature. This entails considering the arguments of jurisprudence, including feminist jurisprudence, and the relationship between legal positivism and natural law. It also involves a critical evaluation of postmodern theorists who deny the significance of the material world on the one hand, and of natural law theorists who posit an essential and unchanging moral law based on an appeal to natural law on the other. This mutual criticism opens up an unexplored path which may lead to a holistic and coherent theory of human rights capable of accommodating woman as subject while also offering a positive re-evaluation of the relationship between nature and culture in the light of the environmental crisis.Although rooted in the Christian natural law tradition, the research seeks to demonstrate that a post-Christian society shaped by Christian values has much to gain from a critical reclamation of natural law and its capacity to inform concepts of the good life. However, if this is to take seriously the questions of women, the environment and social justice, then it must go beyond the arguments of Christian communitarians such as Alasdair MacIntyre, to offer a more radical and far-reaching reappraisal of the relationship between Christianity and secular culture, based on a revitalised doctrine of creation which affirms the significance of the material world, including the sexed human body, as a good creation capable of being orchestrated in a way that allows for the mutual and interdependent flourishing of human society and the natural world.This approach seeks to cultivate a dialogue in which secular and theological perspectives and arguments are invoked as resources for the development of a theory of women's rights capable of responding to the challenges of both secular and religious concepts of justice, gender and and equality before the law.