Book Symposium on Allen Buchanan’s The Heart of Human Rights (OUP, 2013)

Nuffield College, Oxford

5 June 2015, 9:30-17:00

Speakers: Allen Buchanan, Simon Caney, Cecile Fabre, Sarah Fine, Mervyn Frost, Pietro Maffettone, David Miller, Andrea Sangiovanni, John Tasioulas, Jesse Tomalty, Guglielmo Verdirame, Lorenzo Zucca

The language of human rights has come to dominate public discourse on a variety of issues of great moral and political importance: poverty, climate change, privacy, democracy, and war, to name a few. There is, however, considerable disagreement in the philosophical discourse on human rights about their nature, content, and justification. In his recent and impressive contribution, The Heart of Human Rights (OUP, 2013), Allen Buchanan develops a novel and controversial account of the moral justification of the international legal human rights system, which notably challenges the orthodox view about the close relationship between moral human rights on the one hand and international legal human rights on the other. This symposium will bring together researchers working on human rights to discuss the many philosophically interesting and politically pressing questions raised in The Heart of Human Rights.

Attendance is free and open to all, but places are limited so registration is required. 

To register, please email buchanan.symposium@gmail.com.

This event is organized by Jesse Tomalty (Oxford), Leif Wenar (KCL), and Simon Caney (Oxford).

It is made possible by financial support from the Society for Applied Philosophy.