Social and Economic Human Rights and Agent-Relativity

EDUARDO RIVERA LÓPEZ

Workshop; The Political Philosophy of Economic and Social Human Rights; 2017

UK-Latin America Political Philosophy Research Network

There may be several arguments to argue that economic and social human rights (which I will call, for simplicity, ?social rights?) are not true human rights: that they are simple goals or aspirations, that they are principles of justice, that they are not enforceable, due to the complexity of its implementation, that they are not feasible, that they cannot be judicialized, etc. The contrast is obviously with classical liberal human rights (which I will call ?liberal rights?), that is, civil and political rights. These are true rights.My purpose here is not to argue that social rights are not true rights, since I do not think there is anything like a ?true? notion of human right. There may be different kinds of norms, ideals, and moral or political principles that can be expressed in the language of human rights, and this can be plausible or defensible, both politically and conceptually.What I want to do is to show that, beyond terminology and political use, social rights are normatively different from liberal rights, and that this may have some institutional implications. The core of the difference I want to explore concerns a feature that some rights seem to have more clearly than others, which I will call ?agent relativity?.