Jesse Tomalty

University of Bergen
University of Bergen
  •  13
    Human Rights: Moral or Political?
    Philosophical Quarterly. forthcoming.
    This volume makes a welcome contribution to the burgeoning philosophical scholarship on human rights by foregrounding methodological and meta-philosophical issu.
  •  1
    Social Rights at Work
    In Kimberley Brownlee, Adam Neal & David Jenkins (eds.), Being Social: The Philosophy of Social Human Rights, Oxford University Press. pp. 127-143. 2022.
    This paper explores connections between social rights and labour rights within a human rights framework. Social human rights tend to be marginalized both in philosophical debates about human rights and international human rights doctrine and practice. This paper brings social human rights into focus and argues that they play an important though neglected role in shaping the content of labour human rights, in particular the human right to just and favourable conditions of work. The implications f…Read more
  •  174
    Religious Discrimination at the Border
    Ethical Perspectives 28 (3): 362-373. 2021.
    One of the main questions Gillian Brock takes up in Justice for People on the Move (2020) is whether it is morally permissible for states to enact migration policies that discriminate on the basis of religion against those who wish to enter. The main focus of her discussion is on the United States context, and, in particular, the so-called ‘Muslim Ban’ enacted by President Donald Trump in 2017. While Brock offers a powerful critique of this policy, I argue that it is insufficient on its own to s…Read more
  •  1
    The Link between Subsistence and Human Rights
    In Thom Brooks (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Global Justice, Oxford University Press. pp. 183-198. 2020.
    This paper constitutes an exploration and evaluation of the so-called ‘linkage argument' in support of the inclusion of a right to subsistence among human rights. While it is uncontroversial that avoiding poverty is hugely important for all humans, the human right to subsistence and other socio-economic human rights are often regarded as social goals rather than genuine rights. The linkage argument aims to show that a commitment to the existence of any human rights at all entails a commitment to…Read more
  •  18
    On subsistence and human rights
    Dissertation, St. Andrews. 2012.
    The central question I address is whether the inclusion of a right to subsistence among human rights can be justified. The human right to subsistence is conventionally interpreted as a fundamental right to a basic living standard characterized as having access to the material means for subsistence. It is widely thought to entail duties of protection against deprivation and duties of assistance in acquiring access to the material means for subsistence. The inclusion of a right to subsistence amon…Read more
  •  20
    Human Rights and the Broken World
    Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche 4 (2): 47-57. 2014.
    In Ethics for a Broken World (2011),Tim Mulgan invites us to partake in a series of lectures delivered in a fictional future on some of the political philosophies that dominate our current tradition. The future he asks us to imagine is one in which the world is ‘broken’. In the broken world, climate change has lead to intermittent and unpredictable periods of radical scarcity in which there are insufficient resources to guarantee the survival of all existing persons (8-12). We are also to imagin…Read more
  •  58
    Justifying International Legal Human Rights
    Ethics and International Affairs 30 (4): 483-490. 2016.
    In The Heart of Human Rights, Allen Buchanan emphasizes the distinction between moral human rights (MHRs) on the one hand and international legal human rights (ILHRs) on the other. MHRs are the moral rights held universally by all humans simply in virtue of being human. ILHRs are the legal rights of international practice, which are articulated in the United Nations’ International Bill of Rights and related legal documents. One of the most controversial aspects of Buchanan’s account of human rig…Read more
  •  50
    Remedial Responsibility for Severe Poverty: Justice or Humanity?
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 34 (1): 89-98. 2016.
    Remedial responsibility is the prospective responsibility to assist those in great need. With tens of millions of people worldwide suffering from severe poverty, questions about the attribution of remedial responsibility and the nature of the relevant duties of assistance are among the most pressing of our time. This article concerns the question of whether remedial responsibility for severe poverty is a matter of justice or of humanity. I discuss three kinds of situation in which an agent owes …Read more
  •  90
    The force of the claimability objection to the human right to subsistence
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 44 (1): 1-17. 2014.
    The claimability objection rejects the inclusion of a right to subsistence among human rights because the duties thought to correlate with this right are undirected, and thus it is not claimable. This objection is open to two replies: One denies that claimability is an existence condition on rights. The second suggests that the human right to subsistence actually is claimable. I argue that although neither reply succeeds on the conventional interpretation of the human right to subsistence, an al…Read more