Human Rights, Legitimacy, and the Use of Force
Allen Buchanan - Oxford University Press, 2010
The thirteen essays by Allen Buchanan
collected here are arranged in such a way as to make evident their thematic
interconnections: the important and hitherto unappreciated relationships among
the nature and grounding of human rights, the legitimacy of international
institutions, and the justification for using military force across borders.
Each of these three topics has spawned a significant literature, but
unfortunately has been treated in isolation. In this volume Buchanan makes the
case for a holistic, systematic approach, and in so doing constitutes a major
contribution at the intersection of International Political Philosophy and
International Legal Theory.A major theme of Buchanan's book is the need to
combine the philosopher's normative analysis with the political scientist's
focus on institutions. Instead of thinking first about norms and then about
institutions, if at all, only as mechanisms for implementing norms, it is
necessary to consider alternative "packages" consisting of norms and
institutions. Whether a particular norm is acceptable can depend upon the
institutional context in which it is supposed to be instantiated, and whether a
particular institutional arrangement is acceptable can depend on whether it
realizes norms of legitimacy or of justice, or at least has a tendency to foster
the conditions under which such norms can be realized. In order to evaluate
institutions it is necessary not only to consider how well they implement norms
that are now considered valid but also their capacity for fostering the
epistemic conditions under which norms can be contested, revised, and improved
