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Justice, Rights and Wrongs

Justice, Rights and Wrongs Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice, Rights and Wrongs (Princeton, NJ and Woodstock, UK: Princeton University Press, 2008) xiv + 400 pp. £35.00. ISBN 978-0-691-12967-9 (hbk). Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Justice, Rights and Wrongs is a major contribution to the contemporary debate about justice. It is, however, more narrowly focused than the broad brush title would suggest. Wolterstorff’s aim is to show the secure grounds on which a belief in natural rights can be the foundation for an understanding of justice: ‘I think of a social order as just’, he writes, ‘insofar as its members enjoy the goods to which they have rights.’ What he does not discuss is how to specify those rights, and how ‘natural rights’ can be deployed in a strategy for justice. The argument is in three parts. First, Wolterstorff examines ‘the archeology of rights’ to defend the claim that a belief in natural rights is not the product of the possessive individualism associated with the Enlightenment, nor is it the lineal descendent of the nominalism of William of Ockham. He follows Brian Tierney in tracing the line of descent of the notion of ius back to canon lawyers who pre-date Ockham. From there, he traces the pre-history of http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Ecclesiology Brill

Justice, Rights and Wrongs

Ecclesiology , Volume 8 (2): 235 – Jan 1, 2012

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 2012 by Koninklijke Brill N.V., Leiden, The Netherlands
Subject
Article Reviews
ISSN
1744-1366
eISSN
1745-5316
DOI
10.1163/174553112X630480
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice, Rights and Wrongs (Princeton, NJ and Woodstock, UK: Princeton University Press, 2008) xiv + 400 pp. £35.00. ISBN 978-0-691-12967-9 (hbk). Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Justice, Rights and Wrongs is a major contribution to the contemporary debate about justice. It is, however, more narrowly focused than the broad brush title would suggest. Wolterstorff’s aim is to show the secure grounds on which a belief in natural rights can be the foundation for an understanding of justice: ‘I think of a social order as just’, he writes, ‘insofar as its members enjoy the goods to which they have rights.’ What he does not discuss is how to specify those rights, and how ‘natural rights’ can be deployed in a strategy for justice. The argument is in three parts. First, Wolterstorff examines ‘the archeology of rights’ to defend the claim that a belief in natural rights is not the product of the possessive individualism associated with the Enlightenment, nor is it the lineal descendent of the nominalism of William of Ockham. He follows Brian Tierney in tracing the line of descent of the notion of ius back to canon lawyers who pre-date Ockham. From there, he traces the pre-history of

Journal

EcclesiologyBrill

Published: Jan 1, 2012

There are no references for this article.