Philosopher Kings? The Adjudication of Conflicting Human Rights and Social Values

by Christie, George C.

• ISBN13: 9780195341157
• ISBN10: 0195341155
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-03-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Philosopher Kings? The Adjudication of Conflicting Human Rights and Social Values , by George C. Christie, examines the attempts by courts to sort out conflicts involving freedom of expression, including religious expression, on the one hand, and rights to privacy and other important social values on the other. It approaches the subject from a comparative perspective, using principally cases decided by European and United States courts. A significant part of this book analyzes conflicts between freedom of expression and the right to privacy. In a world in which, freedom of expression and privacy are said to be of equal value, the book explores whether it is possible to develop, through case-by-case adjudication, a legal regime which can give clear direction as to what expression is or is not permitted. Otherwise, if such a regime proves impossible, in the guise of recognizing the equal value of expression and privacy, privacy may become de facto the preferred value.

Author Biography

George C. Christie is James B. Duke Professor of Law at the Duke University School of Law. He has degrees from Columbia and Harvard, and a diploma in International Law from Cambridge. In addition to a long career in academia, he has been at various times a lawyer in private practice as well as assistant general counsel for the United States Agency for International Development.

His chief academic interests are in the areas of torts and jurisprudence, in both of which he has published widely. His monograph: The Notion of an Ideal Audience in Legal Argument was published in 2000 and then translated and published in French in 2005. An earlier monograph: Law, Norms and Authority was published in 1982. His current interest in problems encountered in the adjudication of human rights is part of his wider interest in comparative legal reasoning. Professor Christie has been a visiting professor at a number of universities in the United States, including Northwestern University and the University of Michigan, as well as at universities in Greece, New Zealand, China, Japan, South Africa, and Germany. He is a past fellow of the National Humanities Center in the United States and has also been a visiting fellow at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Prolegomena	p. 1
Introduction	p. 3
"Rights" Discourse	p. 13
Structural Impediments to Consistent Application of "Universal" Human Rights	p. 21
The Difficult Issues	p. 35
The Enlarged View of Rights in Contemporary Constitutions and Human Rights Conventions-The Notion of Defeasible Rights	p. 37
Litigation Involving a Conflict of Rights, Each of Equal Value	p. 51
The Limited Help From Philosophy And The Social Sciences	p. 75
The Epistemology of Judicial Decision Making	p. 77
The Unsuccessful Attempt to Find a Philosophical "North Star" to Aid in Judicial Decision Making	p. 89
The Use of Balancing Tests and Factor Analysis-The Inevitable Tendency to Resort to Bright-Line Tests	p. 105
Case-By-Case Adjudication	p. 117
An Overview of Case-by-Case Adjudication, Its Possible Goals and the Influence of Legal Traditions	p. 119
The Optimal Conditions for Case-by-Case Adjudication and Its Limits	p. 129
Case-by-Case Adjudication of Contentious Human Rights Controversies	p. 147
Conclusion	p. 165
What If We Must Choose?	p. 167
Bibliography	p. 177
Table of Cases	p. 183
Index	p. 189
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