Human rights and four schools of thought

Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour’s groundbreaking work challenges the human rights orthodoxy by proposing that there are four schools of thought. First published in her monograph, Who Believes in Human Rights? Reflections on the European Convention (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2006), her model asserts that:

  • ‘natural scholars’ conceive of human rights as given
  • ‘deliberative scholars’ as agreed upon
  • ‘protest scholars’ as fought for
  • ‘discourse scholars’ as talked about.

The model allows differing positions on the foundation, universality, possible realisation and legal embodiment of human rights to be explored. Through mapping the different schools, she gives greater clarity to debate within the human rights field.

Project timeframe

This research project commenced in 2006 and is ongoing.

Project objectives

The objectives of the research were to:

  • improve understanding about approaches to human rights
  • develop a model to enable the mapping of the entire human rights conceptual field
  • explore the position of each school of thought in relation to human rights law and on the foundation, realisation, universality and overall faith in human rights.

Project findings and impact

The model quickly reached top most downloaded article status when it was published in the leading journal, Human Rights Quarterly, and has provided structure for subsequent research by Dembour into the problematic access to human rights experienced by irregular migrants.

The model was the subject of the prestigious Torkel Opashl Memorial Lecture given at the University of Oslo in 2009 and keynote addresses in 2011 at both the symposium organised by the Dutch branch of Amnesty International to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary and the Nordic Educational Research Association (NERA) conference on rights and education in Finland.

In addition, Professor Dembour lectured on the model at the Institut Universitaire Kurt Bösch in Switzerland and was invited by Clingendeal, the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, to present her findings in courses developed for diplomats from the Arab region in 2013.

By introducing new, theoretical mapping of human rights scholarship, Dembour has managed to reframe approaches and debate within the field. Dembour expanded on her research into human rights. Read the project page detailing work on Human rights and migrants and the accompanying blog for more information.


Research team

Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour

Output

Dembour, M-B (2006) Who Believes in Human Rights? Reflections on the European Convention, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Dembour, M-B & Kelly, T (2011) Are Human Rights for Migrants? Critical Perspectives on the Status of Illegal Migrants in Europe and the United States, Routledge, London.

Partners

Professor Tobias Kelly, University of Edinburgh