Labour Law as Human Rights Law: A Critique of the Use of ‘Dignity’ by Freedland and Kountouris

In their recent book, The Legal Construction of Personal Work Relations, Mark Freedland and Nicola Kountouris present an ambitious study of the personal scope of (what they would not want to call) ‘employment’ law. The book does this within a broader argument that calls for the reconceptualization of labour law as a whole, and it is this broader argument on which I shall focus in this chapter. Their aim, in urging us to see labour law through the lens of ‘dignity’ is to bring labour law and human rights law into closer alignment than has sometimes been the case in the past. Increasingly, dignity is seen as providing a, sometimes the, foundation of human rights law, particularly in Europe. I shall suggest that whilst the aim of constructing a new set of foundations for labour law is a worthy and increasingly urgent task, the concepts on which Freedland and Kountouris seek to build their project pose significant difficulties. In particular, their espousal of ‘dignity’ presents problems that must be addressed if their reconceptualization is not to prove a blind alley.

Realist evaluation: an immanent critique

This paper critically analyses realist evaluation, focussing on its primary analytical concepts: mechanisms, contexts, and outcomes. Noting that nursing investigators have had difficulty in operationalizing the concepts of mechanism and context, it is argued that their confusion is at least partially the result of ambiguities, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the realist evaluation model. Problematic issues include the adoption of empiricist and idealist positions, oscillation between determinism and voluntarism, subsumption of agency under structure, and categorical confusion between context and mechanism. In relation to outcomes, it is argued that realist evaluation's adoption of the fact/value distinction prevents it from taking into account the concerns of those affected by interventions. The aim of the paper is to use these immanent critiques of realist evaluation to construct an internally consistent realist approach to evaluation that is more amenable to being operationalized by nursing researchers.

After the Critique of Rights: For a Radical Democratic Theory and Practice of Human Rights

The critique of human rights has proliferated in critical legal thinking over recent years, making it clear that we can no longer uncritically approach human rights in their liberal form. In this article I assert that after the critique of rights one way human rights may be productively re-engaged in radical politics is by drawing from the radical democratic tradition. Radical democratic thought provides plausible resources to rework the shortcomings of liberal human rights, and allows human rights to be brought within the purview of a wider political project adopting a critical approach to current relations of power. Building upon previous re-engagements with rights using radical democratic thought, I return to the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to explore how human rights may be thought as an antagonistic hegemonic activity within a critical relation to power, a concept which is fundamentally futural, and may emerge as one site for work towards radical and plural democracy. I also assert, via Judith Butler's model of cultural translation, that a radical democratic practice of human rights may be advanced which resonates with and builds upon already existing activism, thereby holding possibilities to persuade those who remain sceptical as to radical re-engagements with rights.