Flighty Purposes and Deeds: A Rejoinder to Malcolm Langford
| Author | Stephen Tully |
| Published date | 01 September 2006 |
| Date | 01 September 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/016934410602400305 |
| Subject Matter | Part A: Article |
FLIGHTY PURPOSES AND DEEDS: A REJOINDER
TO MALCOLM LANGFORD
STEPHEN TULLY*
Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane,
You do unbend your noble strength, to think
So brainsickly of things. Go get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
(Macbeth, Act 2, Scene II).
Mr Langford’s critique is a cogent and persuasive dissection of the apparent defects of
my earlier fault-finding exercise. He chastises me for overreaching ambition,
radicalism, misunderstanding human rights and an inaccurate legal methodology.
As I said much the same for General Comment No. 15, this reply draws common
threads together, identifies additional differences and updates the debate.
1. THE COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND
CULTURAL RIGHTS AS MAGICIAN
Human rights instruments appear to be subject to different interpretative methods
than those prevailing under general international law.
1
Hence the Committee on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (the Committee) may be indulged for its
unreflective textual approach to the word ‘including’. The ordinary meaning of the
word is ‘to place, list, or rate as a part or component of a whole or of a larger group,
class, or aggregate’.
2
When located within a subordinate legislative clause, ‘including’
indicates that those things listed within it fit the description in the independent
clause.
3
The term ‘in its ordinary signification implies that something else has been
given beyond the general thing which precedes it’.
4
However, using the word as a term
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 24/3, 461-472, 2006. 461
#Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), Printed in the Netherlands.
* Ada Evans Chambers, Sydney, Australia.
1
E.g. Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 24 on Reservations to the ICCPR,
International Human Rights Reports, Vol. 2, 1995, p. 10, para. 17; and the US response at International
Human Rights Reports, Vol. 3, 1996, p. 265.
2
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Merriam Company, Springfield, 1976, p. 1143.
3
Steven Novick vs Hardy Myers, Oregon Supreme Court (2000) (unreported).
4
In Re Goetz, 71 Appeals Division 272, 75 New York Supplement 750.
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