Abstract:

There are two distinctive and opposed frameworks within which theories of the demands from human rights are developed. The universalist approach takes the demands to hold against all agents in all places; while the particularist approach takes those demands to hold against a subset of agents and only in certain contexts. This dissertation develops a theory of the demands from human rights that starts from the assumption that those demands are universal, and from that starting point derives a particularist conclusion, that is, that it is only in institutional structures, against agents who occupy positions within those structures, that the demands from human rights have force. The resulting theory of the demands from human rights serves as a defence of the underlying universalist assumption by supplying a response to two key objections that are levelled against universalist theories of human rights: that they are overdemanding and that they do not leave room for the toleration of cultural differences.