Description of Documents and Literature
| Published date | 01 March 1994 |
| Date | 01 March 1994 |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934419401200115 |
| Subject Matter | Part D: Documentation |
NQHR
1/1994
Yes, it is still the same Marlies Galenkamp, showing the reader of her book that the
problem of a collective right such as the right to preserve one's cultural identity has a
'Janus-faced' outlook, having traits belonging to the sphere
of
Gesellschaft and of
Gemeinschaft, and
that
it, in view of this 'Janus-face', may provide
'a
bridge between the
seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the two theoretical models: philosophical liberalism
and communitarian criticism of liberalism' (p. 181). Maybe authors as those criticized by
her, hold the same opinion, thereby not giving arguments stemming from legal theory and
philosophy but
from
other - legal, political, common sense - sources. Maybe, one can
say, they started at the other end of the continuum, on the level of already existing
discussions in present-day international law, using their right to give 'good reasons' for
specific positions (see above). I am glad to see that Marlies Galenkamp accepts this to be
a way to get somewhere. As for me, I once started discussing human rights questions
from a theoretical
point
of view, going from there to practice. Nowadays I mostly do the
reverse, starting with practical problems and seaking what (legal) theory can mean in
order to analyse
or
even solve the problem at stake. This is the way I have read
Galenkamp's book. And I can only come to one conclusion: Galenkamp's book is not
good, it is very good, and has rightly been honoured with a 'cum laude'.
In
sum, it gives
a lot
of
materials to cope with the problem
of
collective rights in a balanced way. I
confess: my impatience was premature.
Let
me, still in connection with the issue
of
(individual) human rights versus collective
rights, end by once
more
giving attention to Galenkamp's saying about having and eating
cakes at the same time. As she notes in the last
part
of the book: 'One cannot have one's
cake and eat it at the same time, can one? On closer inspection one can. In actual practice
one can have
one's
cake and eat a part
of
it'
(p. 186). This tendency to move from a
strongly emphasized tertium non datur to the possibility of a tertium datur seems to me
to be a valuable line
of
arguing as far as the future relations between collective and
individual rights
are
concerned.
DESCRIPTION
OF
DOCUMENTS AND LITERATURE
Civil liberties and human rights in England
and
Wales. David Feldman. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993. - 986 p.
ISBN:0-19-876229-1
This book contains a highly detailed account of the English law and civil liberties,
providing an analysis of a wide range
of
freedoms and evaluating them against a
background of international human rights principles, particularly the European Convention
on Human Rights, and liberal theory. It begins by outlining the place of rights and
freedoms in liberal theory, and methods of protecting rights, both individual and social,
in international and domestic law. The chapters examine such topics as rights to personal
freedom and bodily integrity, and incursions on them in the cause of medical treatment
and the detection
of
crime; rights to privacy and confidentiality, including sexual
freedoms, freedom
of
expression and of the press, and freedom of protest. Equality-re-
lated social rights
are
outlined: freedom from discrimination and rights to education and
health care.
106
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