Baroness Onora O'Neill delivers lecture on human rights

Talk hosted by the Research Priority Area in Rights and Justice, the Centre for Research in Race and Rights, and the Centre for the Study of Global and Social Justice

On November 30, an audience of 160 people listened to Baroness O'Neill discuss the justification of human rights. Is justification unnecessary? Is it sufficient that human rights are legally and ethically widely accepted? Professor O'Neill argued that human rights have never been more widely accepted and endorsed, yet paradoxically there is no greater certainty or agreement on their justification than there used to be. To a considerable extent this is because human rights are victims of their own success. The need for justification seems to many people not urgent, or even unnecessary, because human rights are incorporated into international agreements and institutions, so receive positive justification. Others argue that human rights standards are standards on which persons with varying ethical views converge. The lecture asked whether (legal) positivism or pluralism are enough to justify human rights?

Onora O'Neill is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, a board member of the Medical Research Council, and a crossbench member of the House of Lords. Previously she has been a BBC Reith lecturer, President of the British Academy, chair of the Nuffield Foundation, founding President of the British Philosophical Association, and Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge. She has written widely on political philosophy and ethics, international justice, bioethics, accountability and trust, justice and borders, as well as on the future of universities, the quality of legislation and the ethics of communication, including media ethics. Pictured (left to right) are Dr. Vanessa Pupavac and Professor Andreas Bieler, directors of the Centre for the Study of Global and Social Justice; Baroness O'Neill; Professor Todd Landman, PVC for Social Sciences; Professor Sharon Monteith and Professor Trodd, directors of the Centre for Research in Race and Rights.