Human Rights, Distributive Ethics, and Political Economy

The contents of ethical ideas and the priorities and successes of reform movements depend on the political economy of the place and time in which they emerge. This talk tries to make sense of the relation of human rights ideas and mobilisation to evolving forms of political economy in the modern era.

About our guest: Samuel Moyn is professor of law and professor of history at Yale University. He has written several books in his fields of European intellectual history and human rights history, including The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, and edited or coedited a number of others. His most recent book, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, was published by Harvard University Press in April 2018.

This keynote speech is part of the workshop Redestributive Human Rights?

It is supported by the Australian Human Rights Institute, UNSW Sydney, University of Western Sydney, La Trobe University and the Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne Law School.