while it may not grant the freedoms to individuals enjoyed in a liberal society, in
a fundamental sense all citizens are treated equally. There should exist a ‘decent
consultation hierarchy’, which permits the possibility of dissent (the Arab–Islamic
concept of Shurawould be one example of a consultation hierarchy). Importantly,
the common good conception of justice entails respect for human rights, including
the right to life, liberty (freedom from slavery and forced labour), personal property
and equality before the law. Although a decent society may not permit apostasy
and proselytisation, it must accord a degree of religious freedom to minorities, and
because that right is limited it must also allow citizens the possibility of emigration.
The fundamental philosophical point Rawls makes about human rights is that they
should not depend on a particular conception of the human agent as autonomous,
but rather ‘human rights set a necessary... standard for the decency of domestic
political and social institutions’ (Rawls, 1999: 80).
Human rights fulfil three roles: (a) they are a necessary condition of a regime’s
legitimacy; (b) they determine the limits of sovereignty – the law of people prohibits
intervention in the affairs of another state except when that state is violating human
rights; (c) they set a limit on the pluralism among peoples. Even if Rawls is correct
in arguing that a decent society can respect human rights, are there any grounds
for believing that they will do so for reasons other than state interest? Do they
respect human rights for the ‘right reasons’, or because such respect is useful to
establishing a reputation in international politics? A similar argument could be
applied to the international behaviour of liberal states, but the difference between
liberal and non-liberal societies is that human rights are deeply embedded in the
culture of the former. Even if the leaders of liberal societies are cynical in their use
of human rights rhetoric in international politics – intervening in Kosovo but not
Chechnya – they may well (largely) respect human rights in their domestic political
systems.Rational entailment (Habermas)
The ‘rational entailment’ argument identifies certain conditions for the existence of
social order and from those conditions maintains that there are certain standards
of treatment which all societies should respect. The argument can take two forms- empirical and logical. The empirical version observes actual societies and claims
that the long-term survival of a society depends on the recognition of human rights.
This version has only limited plausibility – many societies function without respect
for human rights; it is somewhat more plausible to maintain that human rights-
respecting societies are more successful than human rights-violating ones, where
success is measured by economic growth and political stability. The logical version
does not deny that social life is possible without human rights, but rather that a
human rights-violating society cannot justify its own political and legal organisation
without falling into contradiction. In Chapter 3 (Equality) we discussed the
citizenship laws of Nazi Germany which effectively stripped Jews of their citizenship.
Legal theorist Lon Fuller (1965) argued that Nazi law could not respect certain
principles internal to law, such as the prohibition on non-retroactivity. Fuller is not
suggesting that Nazi Germany did not ‘function’, but rather that it could not justify
414 Part 4 Contemporary ideas