Human Rights & Social Justice: Books in Collection

Differences between human beings have long been used to justify a range of degrading, exclusionary, and murderous practices that strip people of their humanity and dignity. While considerable scholarship has been devoted to such dehumanization, Matthew S. Weinert asks how we might conceive its reverse—humanization, or what it means to “make human.”

The ethical issues we face in healthcare, justice, and human rights extend beyond national boundaries they are global and cross-cultural in scope. Editors Wanda Teays, John-Stewart Gordon, and Alison Dundes Renteln have assembled the works of an interdisciplinary, international team of experts in bioethics into a comprehensive, innovative and accessible book. It opens with theoretical frameworks that inform a Global Bioethics, followed by three units for an in-depth look at contemporary issues in the field. These are human rights, culture, and public health with each unit including theoretical discussions and lively case studies. Topics range from torture and lethal injection to euthanasia, sex selection, vulnerable human subjects, to health equity, safety and public health, and environmental disasters like Bhopal, Fukushima, and more."

International Human Rights studies the ways in which states and other international actors have addressed human rights since the end of World War II. This unique textbook features substantial attention to the domestic politics of human rights, as well as an extensive emphasis on theory. The fourth edition is substantially rewritten and reorganized to enhance usability, and new material is added to bring the text up to date. Most notably, the sections covering multilateral, bilateral, and transnational action have been broken into seven short chapters, which encourage comparisons within and across types of action and historical cases. New case studies provide context and points of comparison, including a new examination of the contemporary international reactions to human rights violations in China now that the country has become a great power. Additionally, nine “Problems” have been added to the text, which along with the chapter-ending discussion questions, frame alternative interpretations, highlight controversies, and ultimately aim to provoke further thought and discussion amongst readers. International Human Rights, Fourth Edition, is the most current and comprehensive text available that will allow readers to understand how and why human rights are violated, what international action can do to address these violations, and why human rights remain such a small part of international relations.

Global power structures are changing. The United States and Europe are losing ground, as countries such as China and India increase their global reach. At the same time that new global players emerge, multinational corporations, global civil society organizations, and international media carve out their own spaces in international affairs. How will these changes impact the legitimacy of the United Nations? In Shared Responsibility, Carsten Staur examines the ability of the UN to combine its normative functions - defining global objectives, rules, and standards - with practical assistance for its 193 member states. Staur focuses on transformative global challenges, where the UN has the potential to play a critical role in assisting vulnerable countries in the aftermath of conflict, in further developing the concept of "responsibility to protect," in creating a more forceful system of accountability for mass atrocity crimes, and in re-launching sustainable development as the future's principal global development approach and as the basis for dealing effectively with both climate change and the responsible management of global resources. An insider's look at the UN, Shared Responsibility details the problems faced by the United Nations and presents solutions for the organization to remain relevant, legitimate, and action-oriented in the twenty-first century.

Debates about global justice have traditionally fallen into two camps. Statists believe that principles of justice can only be held among those who share a state. Those who fall outside this realm are merely owed charity. Cosmopolitans, on the other hand, believe that justice applies equally among all human beings. On Global Justice shifts the terms of this debate and shows how both views are unsatisfactory. Stressing humanity's collective ownership of the earth, Mathias Risse offers a new theory of global distributive justice--what he calls pluralist internationalism--where in different contexts, different principles of justice apply.

Fringe Benefits, an award-winning theatre company, collaborates with schools and communities to create plays that promote constructive dialogue about diversity and discrimination issues. Staging Social Justice is a groundbreaking collection of essays about Fringe Benefits’ script-devising methodology and their collaborations in the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. The anthology also vividly describes the transformative impact of these creative initiatives on participants and audiences. By reflecting on their experiences working on these projects, the contributing writers—artists, activists and scholars—provide the readerwith tools and inspiration to create their own theatre for social change.

Nine black teenagers were accused of raping two white women on a train in 1931 in northern Alabama. They were arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in the town of Scottsboro in little more than two weeks. The Scottsboro Boys case rapidly captured public attention and became a lightning rod for fundamental issues of social justice including racial discrimination, class oppression, and legal fairness. Involving years of appeals, the Scottsboro trials resulted in two landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings and were a vortex for the sometimes-competing interests of the American Communist Party, the NAACP, and the young men themselves. The cases resulted in a damning portrayal of southern justice and corresponding social mores in several national and international media outlets, and in a spirited defense of the judicial system and prevailing cultural norms in other news reports, particularly in the South. Here, Acker details the alleged crimes, their legal aftermath, and their immediate and enduring social significance as evidenced in media portrayals and other forms of popular culture.

Theories of social justice are necessarily abstract, reaching beyond the particular and the immediate to the general and the timeless. Yet such theories, addressing the world and its problems, must respond to the real and changing dilemmas of the day. A brilliant work of practical philosophy, Frontiers of Justice is dedicated to this proposition. Taking up three urgent problems of social justice neglected by current theories and thus harder to tackle in practical terms and everyday life, Martha Nussbaum seeks a theory of social justice that can guide us to a richer, more responsive approach to social cooperation.

Today's complex social and economic problems leave many people in the affluent world feeling either overwhelmed or ambivalent. Even the small percentage of us who have examined the ethics behind our financial decisions and overcome the often-deterring factors of self-interest rarely know what to do to make any difference. By providing tools for examination and concrete actions for individuals, communities, and society at large, Justice in a Global Economy guides its readers through many of today's complex societal issues, including land use, immigration, corporate accountability, and environmental and economic justice. Beginning with a basic introduction to the impact of economic globalization, the book provides both critical assessments of the current political-economic structures and examples of people and communities who are actively working to transform society. Each chapter concludes with questions for discussion and reflection.

"Luck egalitarianism"--the idea that justice requires correcting disadvantages resulting from brute luck--has gained ground in recent years and is now the main rival to John Rawls's theory of distributive justice. Health, Luck, and Justice is the first attempt to systematically apply luck egalitarianism to the just distribution of health and health care. Challenging Rawlsian approaches to health policy, Shlomi Segall develops an account of just health that is sensitive to considerations of luck and personal responsibility, arguing that people's health and the health care they receive are just only when society works to neutralize the effects of bad luck.