Liberty Rights and the Limits of Liberal Democracy

Abstract

Liberty rights begin life as liberal rights, rights enjoyed by members of liberal societies, and come to be treated as human rights through extension to the international arena. Thus, liberty rights have dual identity and ambitions: as liberal rights, they create, legitimate, and intensify the desire characteristic of members of liberal societies for nothing less than self-determination; as human rights, they generalize what originally was a culturally particular desire into a universal human aspiration worthy of the strongest protection. This chapter considers how well liberty rights live up to these two ambitions and what lessons can be drawn if they fall short. By considering liberty rights in their double identity, it seeks to arrive at a critical appraisal of liberty rights as human rights that would be difficult to reach by attending to liberty rights as human rights alone.