Academic

Christie on Conflicting Human Rights & Social Values

By Lawrence Solum

George C. Christie (Duke University - School of Law) has posted Philosopher Kings? The Adjudication of Conflicting Human Rights as Social Values (Oxford University Press, 2011) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This book is largely concerned with the adjudication of conflicts between freedom of expression and privacy and other social values such as secularism, etc. It looks at the subject from a comparative perspective, comparing the U.S. approach to that taken in Europe including the U.K. The problem is particularly difficult in Europe because the human rights with which I am interested are expressly declared to be defeasible for important social reasons, such as secularism; and in addition the rights of freedom of expression and privacy have been held to be of equal value The book examines whether it is possible to establish the law governing these difficult issues by a regime of case-by-case adjudication, each decided on the basis of ad hoc balancing, or whether in fact, if not expressly, either privacy or expression becomes the preferred value. If the latter is the case, we shall have to choose, and I discuss why expression should be the preferred value.

The download provides the front matter, including the table of contents and preface.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on March 30, 2011 (boomark / email).