This book has two aims. First, to provide a critical legal examination of the liberal state and liberal rights in the law, and secondly, to present a systematic alternative to liberal approaches to both the law and rights, grounded in a left wing conception of human dignity.
At the opening of the 21st century a remarkable thing happened. Liberalism, once considered the only doctrine left standing at the end of history, began to face renewed competition from both the political left and the post-modern conservative right. This book argues that the way forward is not to abandon, but to radicalize, the potential of the liberal project. Analysing major theoretical positions in order to build a critical genealogy of liberal rights, McManus lucidly develops a left wing alternative to the classic liberal approach to rights drawing on the traditions of liberal egalitarians and deliberative democracy theory. Societies, he argues, should be committed to advancingthe human dignity of all through the enshrinement of certain rights into positive state law, the expansion of democracy and a resolute commitment to economic equality.
Part One: Liberalism and Its Critics.- Chapter One: Liberal Rights and their Critics.- Chapter Two: Critics of Liberal Rights.- Chapter Three: The Limitations of Liberalism and Liberal Rights.- Part Two: A Critical Legal Approach to Dignity, Law, and Rights.- Chapter Four: Dignified Self-Authorship and a Critical Legal Model of Rights.- Chapter Five: Rethinking the Ontology of Law and Rights on Critical Legal Lines.- Bibliography
Matthew McManus is a Professor of Politics at Whitman College and the author of Making Human Dignity Central to International Human Rights Law and The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism, amongst other books.
