Jonathan Sumption

The human element

The Idea of Justice, by Amartya Sen

issue 01 August 2009

Writing in 1792, in the aftermath of the French revolution, Jeremy Bentham famously dismissed all talk of the rights of man as mere rhetoric. Justice, he said, was concerned with rights and duties, and they were the creatures of law. There could be no rights without law to express them, he said, no justice without courts to enforce it.

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