Lecture on “Human Rights, Equality, Law”

Professor Costas Douzinas (Birkbeck, University of London) delivers a lecture on “Human Rights, Equality, Law” for the IREE ESCOLA.

Lecture Outline

1. The facts: Inequalities are catastrophic morally, politically, economically

2. Law’s role: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1)

3. Legal equality
Equality before the law – Rights and Recognition
Equality of opportunities – Affirmative action
Limited material redistribution

4. Law’s failures
Property rights
Economic and Social rights

5. Human Rights
Poverty not equality
The right to health

“lf all humans have equal rights, and all the peoples have equal rights, then we cannot maintain the kind of inegalitarian system that the capitalist world-economy has always been and always will be.”
Immanuel Wallerstein ‘The Insurmountable Contradictions of Liberalism’ (1995) 94 Southern Atlantic Quarterly 176

6. Political action – we are the 99%