Kaip idealai ir kaip teisingumo reikalavimai
Human Rights as Ideals and Justice Requirements

Summary/Abstract: The subject of the article is the analysis and evaluation of competing human rights concepts. The objective of the research is to discuss the implications of the concept defining human rights as ideals for human rights theory and practice. The concept of human rights as ideals is firmly established in the prevailing political and legal discourse. The origins of such concept lie at the beginnings of modern political theory and in the first political documents establishing human rights. The concept of human rights as legal and political ideals is also supported by their status as the most important values of modern liberal democratic state. Regardless of the attractiveness of the concept presenting human rights as ideals that the modern state must strive to realize as broadly as possible, this concept is problematic from the theoretical and practical point of view. The article, based on Hohfeld and Tasioulas insights, shows that human rights can only function effectively if they generate correlative duties. Real rights, unlike ideals, are inherently definite. On the other hand, rights perceived as ideals are separated from correlative duties. Such separation of rights and duties impacts not only integrity but also moral weight of rights. The concept of rights as ideals not only leads to uncertainty, but also adversely affects the prevailing proportionality test, which is used to justify a balance between human rights and public interests. The article argues that the classical concept of human rights better served not by the notion of rights as ideals but by the notion of rights as requirements of justice. As it was elaborated by Hohfeld, there is a fundamental link between the existence of rights and the existence of correlative duties. This link implies that the requirements of justice are an integral part of the concept of human rights. The concept of human rights as a requirement of justice, generating moral and legal justifiable obligations for legal subjects, helps to rationally explain and justify the importance of human rights, their scope and their relation to the public interest. At the same time, the concept of human rights as a requirement of justice frees human rights from their submission to ideological and group interests. This concept also preserves the moral weight that characterizes the classical concept of human rights. Finally, the concept of human rights as a requirement for justice creates preconditions for greater objectivity in search for a fair balance between human rights and the public interest. Therefore, it is expedient to treat human rights from a theoretical and practical point of view not as ideals, but as conditions necessary for the realization of the ideal of justice in society.

• Details
• Contents