The PhD project involves writing a dissertation on the following topic: ‘Human Rights and Human Duties: Assessing the Obligations entailed in Human Rights’.
The research questions are:
a. What is the exact relation between human rights and human duties? Are all rights claimable and enforceable? Who has the obligation to protect universal goods?
b. What do human duties require in terms of content? Do they require an obligation to avoid deprivation, to protect from deprivation or to aid the deprived, as Shue suggests?
c. Who are the specific claimants of human duties (to whom are human duties owed), to individuals only or to groups as well, as according to the ‘Responsibility to Protect’?
d. Who are the primary bearers of human duties: individuals, governments or any collective body? Further, on the basis of which reasoning can duties be attributed?
The research aims at the following objectives:
1. Analysing the conceptual link between human rights and human duties.
2. Developing a normative theory of human duties.
3. Proposing practical guidelines for the assessment of the legal implications of human duties.
Alongside the PhD research, the candidate is required to make a small contribution to the teaching of the Philosophy of Law department in the Bachelor of Law programme of the Faculty of Law.
Organization
The Department of Legal Philosophy currently consists of one professor, two senior lecturers, one lecturer, one postdoctoral researcher and four PhD candidates. The staff teach both in the Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes of the Faculty of Law, and also in the Master’s degree programme of the Faculty of Philosophy.
Its research is embedded in the State and Law (STeR) research centre of the Faculty of Law, Radboud University Nijmegen.
PhD Position in Philosophy of Law
