As times change so must we as a society, and that includes our conception of rights, say William F. Schulz and Sushma Raman, whose new book, The Coming Good Society: Why New Realities Demand New Rights, came out just as Black Lives Matter protesters filled the streets this summer. We spoke with them about the current view—and the future—of human rights.
How do you understand the purpose of rights? What function do they serve in a society?
Human rights describe what a good society looks like. They put flesh on the bones of the concept of “dignity.” A good society will be one in which all creatures live lives of dignity and the natural world itself is respected and flourishes. Human rights delineate what it takes to make such dignity a reality and such flourishing possible, e.g., due process; fair treatment; adequate food, housing, employment and health care; and care for the ecosystem in which we are enmeshed. At a time when economic inequities, racism, and denial of climate change are rampant, rights are more important than ever as a vehicle for envisioning and bringing about a more just world.
Many people think of human rights, grounded in human nature, are timeless and unchanging? Why do you reject this picture?
The common conception of rights is that they are characteristics of human beings, like hair color or a tendency to put on weight. But in our book we argue that rights are based upon human beings’ transactions with one another and the world around us and that humans assign rights based upon our changing conceptions of dignity and of what constitutes a good society. So, to give an example, within the past fifteen years, many nations have decided to assign a right to marriage equality for LGBTQ persons. If that right was inherent, then gay and lesbian people in, say, ancient Mesopotamia presumably had that right but nobody knew it, including LGBTQ people. We don’t think that makes sense. If, for example, there is now a growing recognition of digital rights, those rights couldn’t possibly have existed from the time of ancient Mesopotamia. Instead, we say that marriage equality or digital rights are new rights that have been newly assigned as a result of such things as changing norms, social and political pressure, and new technology.
What do you see as the most important frontier in rights? Where should we expect to see the most significant changes in twenty years?
The most important frontier in rights is the impact of scientific and technological advancements on our rights and the overall human rights framework. We might think of the right to privacy, for instance, as a luxury or less relevant than, say, the right not to be tortured or “disappeared,” but we’ve seen time and again that surveillance is the first step in violations of rights, including detention, torture, and extrajudicial killings. The right to privacy is now under siege given the rise of government surveillance of citizens using sophisticated technologies, and the pervasive commodification of our data by companies. We should expect civil society efforts to protect the right to privacy and to generate discussion of new rights and concepts as well, such as the right to be forgotten and algorithmic justice.
Recent instances of police violence have generated significant social protests in the United States. Is this an area that calls for the formation of new rights?
Police violence in the United States is not new but rather derives from a long history of slavery, and institutions, laws, and policies designed to surveil and imprison Black people after slavery ended. It is less a matter of a “few bad apples” than a set of state institutions—including the police, but also child welfare, probation, parole, public education, and public health—that are rooted in historical and current-day discriminatory practices. This is an area that calls for reimagining justice to ensure institutional arrangements, laws, and policies and related resources are devoted to racial equity, so that Black people and other people of color can fully exercise their rights to due process, equal protection, and more. It is also an area where new rights might help in coalescing social movements’ demands during protests. For example, the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are championing “the right to record,” to allow protestors to record police brutality, while the “right to be forgotten” that is currently being debated in Europe could be used by individuals to delete information from their past on online platforms.
