Description
Book SynopsisIn Feminist Human Rights: A Political Approach, Kristen Hessler argues that the proper task of philosophical human rights theory is to theorize the multiple, contested moral visions of human rights that animate the practice itself. Drawing on a broadly pragmatist methodology, Hessler demonstrates that unjust social hierarchies concealed by entrenched ideologies can be exposed by the activism of marginalized groups for their own human rights, and the resulting understandings of human rights morality can then be realized in law. This more inclusive process both overcomes a significant obstacle to fulfilling human rights in practice and contributes to a fuller theoretical understanding of human rights morality in the abstract. Hessler closely analyzes an extended case study of the jurisprudence on crimes of rape and sexual violence in the ad hoc international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. By centering the voices of women testifying about their experiences of
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Orthodox/Political Debate and Its Methodological Assumptions
Chapter 2: Towards a Political Philosophy of Human Rights
Chapter 3: Structural Equality
Chapter 4: Case Study: Prosecutor v. Akayesu
Chapter 5: Structural Inequality and Hermeneutical Injustice
Chapter 6: Engaged Moral Inquiry
