Ethics

What justifies so many people, especially nasty people who don't show us any respect, in talking about their having "human rights"? I mean, doesn't it need to be in my interest to respect bad people's rights? Ewan

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Human rights are understood as very basic rights that every human being has. By virtue of having these rights, every human being enjoys some minimal moral protections against being treated in certain ways by other (individual or collective) human agents. And by virtue of having these rights, every human being also enjoys some minimal moral protections against having certain laws or social practices imposed upon him or her.

For example, your human right not to be tortured imposes a stringent moral duty on all human agents that they not torture you and that they not collaborate in imposing upon you laws or social practices under which you are avoidably exposed to torture. Your human right to freedom of expression imposes a stringent moral duty on all human agents that they not prevent you from expressing yourself and that they not collaborate in imposing upon you laws or social practices under which you might well be so prevented. And your human right to basic necessities imposes a stringent moral duty on all human agents that they not deprive you of such necessities and that they not collaborate in imposing upon you laws or social practices under which you might well end up so deprived.

Now your idea is that bad (or nasty) people should be exempted from human rights. I don't think this is a good idea, for the following reasons.

First, there is no agreement about exactly which people are bad. Take some group of which you are a member and then write down all members' names in two columns: good and bad. Let other group members do the same. I think you will find that the listings do not coincide. Very few of those you listed as bad will so list themselves. And some members may even list you among the bad -- perhaps on the ground that you don't show them any respect.

What to do in the face of such disagreement? One plausible solution is to agree to respect the human rights of all, even those one thinks are bad, on the understanding that all others also respect the human rights of all (including those they deem bad). This solution shows how respecting the human rights of people you deem bad can be in your interest. This is in your interest insofar as it is part of a universal convention under which your human rights are respected even by those who deem you to be bad.

Now you will say that some people really are bad -- they are not disposed to honor any universal convention of respecting human rights, and instead commit rape, mayhem, or murder, for example. And you will add that, surely, such people should be punished severely.

Yes, indeed. By ascribing human rights to people, one is not protecting them from such punishment. One is merely making sure that such punishments are deserved. No one should be severely punished without a fair trial in which he can, with the help of a competent attorney, respond to the charges laid against him. The conduct he is accused of must have been criminal under a justified law at the time he engaged in it. And the evidence presented against him must convince an impartial judge or jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the accused is really guilty as charged. If, and only if, these conditions are satisfied may a severe punishment be inflicted on a person without violating this person's human rights.

You will notice that I am arguing here not merely against you, but also against the US and UK governments, which have in effect decided to follow your idea and not to respect the human rights of people they deem bad. As a result, thousands of people have been tortured and thousands are languishing in (often secret) jails -- not only in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, but also in Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Thailand, Uzbekistan, other locations in Eastern Europe, and on the British island of Diego Garcia -- with very little hope of ever being charged with any crime, ever having access to a lawyer, ever being able to communicate to their families that they are still alive. To find out what is known about these people, you can look at the research done by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Earlier I wrote that it is in your interest to respect the human rights even of those you deem bad insofar as such respect is part of a universal convention under which your human rights are respected even by those who deem you to be bad. Addressed to the US and UK governments, this appeal has much less force. They may well believe that they are powerful enough not to need the benefits of this convention.

Still, even the most powerful agents have moral reasons to respect the human rights of all. One such reason, implicit in what was said before, is that many of those we deem bad may not actually be bad. As the research done by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International shows time and again, many who have been detained for years as "enemy combatants" are entirely innocent of any crime (and often not released precisely because they are innocent -- it is much less embarrassing for the US and UK governments never to let such people resurface again than to make them reappear after years of abuse with mutually corroborating inside stories about secret detention facilities whose very existence is officially denied).

Two additional moral reason are these: Even genuinely bad people sometimes become good or at least better. The prospects of this happening are generally brighter if we treat them with justice and humanity than if we give up on them by treating them like animals or monsters.

Moreover, by treating even evidently bad people without justice, we are also dehumanizing ourselves. Toward the end of World War Two, Churchill advocated that, once the war was won, the top Nazi leaders should be summarily shot like dangerous beasts. These Nazi leaders were among the worst people the world had ever seen and they had committed their crimes in such a public manner that there could be little doubt about their guilt. And yet Roosevelt successfully insisted that they should receive a proper trial. Even if we did not owe it to them, we still owed it to ourselves and to their victims and to posterity to uphold in our treatment of them the very moral standards they had sought to obliterate once and for all.

This brings me to a last point. I agree with you that it is hypocritical if not grotesque for certain very bad people to appeal to their human rights -- bad people like Saddam Hussein or Suharto or Pinochet who, when they were in power, did not show the slightest concern for the human rights of those they killed and tortured. You can laugh at their appeals with contempt and nonetheless recognize the important moral reason (stated in the preceding paragraph) for giving them a fair trial.

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