Theorizing about Human Rights from the Bottom Up

In his influential work on human rights, James Griffin (2008) claims to take what he refers to as a ‘bottom-up’ approach to theorizing about human rights. He explains that in developing a conception of human rights, the bottom-up approach starts from ‘human rights as used in our actual social life by politicians, lawyers, social campaigners, as well as theorists of various sorts’ (29). I argue that this approach is amenable to two interpretations, one focusing on the linguistic practice governing the use of the term ‘human rights’, and the other focusing on the legal and political practices in which human rights norms are embedded. I further argue that Griffin does not obviously take either of these approaches. This amounts to a criticism of his theory because there are compelling reasons to think that theorizing about human rights should proceed from the bottom up in both of the senses outlined.