| dc.description | Abstract. Although international human rights and libertarianism both stem from Enlightenment rights traditions, their exponents have never engaged in meaningful exchanges. However, in recent years monitoring bodies have developed what is identified in this article as a ‘Libertarian Principle of Human Rights’ (LPHR), which highlights the two movements’ shared anti-authoritarianism. LPHR runs as follows: Governments cannot legitimately recite public morals as a sufficient justification to limit individual human rights. That principle may seem like a commonplace today, but throughout history, even throughout the history of liberalism, any notion that comprehensive catalogues of individual interests must trump religious or customary beliefs has counted as the rare exception. Human rights experts have never acknowledged LPHR, let alone labelled it as libertarian, often preferring to emphasise human rights’ compatibility with traditional belief systems. Yet LPHR forms a necessary part of any serious rights jurisprudence. It can be substantiated even for highly controversial rights, such as LGBTQ+ rights, suggesting that it applies a fortiori to more settled rights. Rights advocates might still distrust suggestions that human rights are bound by a libertarian precept, given libertarianism’s individualist assumptions; however, far from undermining communal and holistic conceptions of rights, LPHR bolsters them. | en_US |
