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Example research essay topic: Freedom Of Speech Social And Economic - 1,381 words

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... f-evident, which is that of each individual to equal freedom, and that any other right must be a derivation or specialization of this right, as are the freedoms of religion, assembly, and speech. Otherwise what is alleged to be a natural or human right is only a human want or need, and other justification must be found to satisfy it. Human rights may also be justified by a social contract. That is, these are the rights that in the state of nature all people, contracting to form a common government for their welfare, would impartially agree upon. A variant of this is to ask the question of all people as to what rights they would want to be guaranteed if they were completely free to recreate their society and state, while ignorant of their original position or status in it.

Those rights theoretically agreed upon would then define our human rights. Finally, there is the positivists' justification by the behavior and practices of states. These, it is said, are what rights the world community has agreed to in their international deliberative assemblies, organizations, and treaties. And therefore they describe the multicultural, multinational consensus as to what rights human beings as human beings are entitled and may justly claim. Besides justification there is the question whether these rights are absolute, so fundamental as rights that they should not be abridged ever. This used to be a question raised with regard to basic civil rights such as that of the freedom of religion, and the answer was that no right could be absolute.

For one, in concrete situations rights may contradict each other (as when one person's religion dictates the limitation of another's freedom of speech). For another, even what are considered the most important rights have to be circumscribed to promote a just social order. For example, even in the United States with its Bill of Rights and Supreme Court jurists like Justice Hugo Black that have proclaimed that freedom of speech is absolute, a person is not legally free to publish a defamation of the character or reputation of a non-public person. In any case, this question assumes that all human rights already have a legal status in international and municipal laws. Some do, such as certain political and civil rights in democratic constitutions, but internationally these and the other human rights collectively are not what may be presently demanded of a state such that their denial enables legal or international action to be taken against a government. Rather, together they are goals of state and international behavior.

This is made clear in the preamble to the UDHR, for example, which proclaims the document "as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society... shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance... " Given this status of human rights and their very large number, are some rights more basic than others such that their satisfaction takes precedence over the others? Even though the UN General Assembly resolved in 1977 that all human rights and fundamental freedoms are "inalienable and indivisible" and that all should be given "equal attention, " this question of precedence has caused much international debate on human rights. Usually the democracies and in particular Western countries have argued that civil and political rights must take precedence, that without such rights as to the ballot and freely elected representatives, and the freedom of religion, speech, and assembly, no one can be secure in any social, economic, or cultural rights. On the other side, many of the leaders of nondemocratic and less economically developed states argue that this should be the other way around, that the drive to achieve economic development, a fair standard of living, social security, and other such internationally specified rights, initially precludes certain civil and political rights. Some of these leaders even go further and argue that Western nations have pursued a kind of cultural imperialism by interfering in their internal affairs- - -as by tying economic aid to human rights progress- - -and trying to impose on them alien, inappropriate, or untimely human rights.

Their human rights progress, they argue, should be judged within their own cultural context by their own "particularities. " This debate is implicitly about the means for achieving certain social, economic, and cultural rights. Those subscribing to the Western tradition of liberal individualism see civil and political rights, what are ordinarily called liberal democratic freedoms, as not only rights in themselves, but also as means for achieving other rights, such as rights to development, social security, employment, a reasonable standard of living, and the like. That is, when a people are free under a limited constitutional government, they argue that a free social and economic market naturally follows, and this will create the wealth and diversity to automatically secure social and economic human rights, such as to development and employment. The opposing position is that government must be fully involved in the economy and society through government ownership and control and intervention to achieve social, economic, and cultural rights. The main international human rights debate then reduces to the empirical question as to the best route to social, economic, and cultural development and human happiness and satisfaction. This is then a debate along two traditional dimensions, that between democrats and authoritarians, and that between individualists and socialists.

This debate notwithstanding, the international community has established certain rights as so basic that there is virtually no nation today dissenting in public from them. In practice they are neither goals nor are they to be held in abeyance while achieving other rights. They now exist for all people. Such is the right to be free from piracy, racism, torture, summary executions, slavery, starvation, and genocide. Even the foremost proponents of cultural relativism do not argue that nations or people should be free to violate these rights.

They thus form a universal core of existing international human rights. Of major interest to students of nonviolence, many proponents of human rights have seen them as not only promoting the human dignity and worth of the person, but also as facilitating more peaceful relations among and within nations. Article 55 of the UN Charter reads: "With a view to the creation of conditions of stability and well-being which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations, ... the UN shall promote... universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. " This view of the close relationship between peace and human rights, particularly those civil and political rights that define democracy, has received considerable research support in recent decades.

Indeed, a more general empirical statement of this relationship can be made. Among those nations that most observe human rights, the democracies, war does not occur, domestic collective violence is on average the least, and there is virtually no domestic genocide or mass murder by their governments. Among those nations that least observe human rights, aggressive war is most common, internal violence is greatest, and genocide and mass murder is most pervasive, often accounting for millions of victims. Accordingly one might argue that respect for human rights in practice reduces to the respect for and nonviolent preservation of human life, the most fundamental human right of all.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Donnelly, Jack. INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993. Donnelly, Jack, and Rhoda Howard, eds. INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK ON HUMAN RIGHTS. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1987.

Forsythe, David P. THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS. Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1991. Glaser, Kurt and Stefan T. Possony. VICTIMS OF POLITICS: THE STATE OF HUMAN RIGHTS.

New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. Humana, Charles. WORLD HUMAN RIGHTS GUIDE. London: The Economist Publications, 1986. Lawson, Edward H. ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HUMAN RIGHTS.

New York: Taylor and Francis, 1990. Rummel, R. J. DEATH BY GOVERNMENT.

New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1994. Sieghart, Paul. THE INTERNATIONAL LAW OF HUMAN RIGHTS. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Strauss, Leo. NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953. UNITED NATIONS YEARBOOK ON HUMAN RIGHTS. Geneva: United Nations, biennial.


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Research essay sample on Freedom Of Speech Social And Economic

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