PROPORTIONALITY IN HUMAN RIGHTS: THE AXIOMATIC REASONING OF EQUALITY
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Abstract
No human right to subsistence has yet been settled, due to continuing debate over equality and the meanings of proportionality in survival. Across Europe, groceries and energy costs are overtaking consumers’ resources to pay for them. Economists say this crisis will increase the number of households subsisting in poverty. In light of this statement of significance, the overall objective of this research is to discover a critical exegesis on the character of equality. After the developments of the axiomatic reasoning of Eudoxus, the issue arises naturally as to how to characterize ‘equality’. The argument seeks to sustain the proposition that equality is an axiom in the nature of a deus ex machina. Saying that people are alike morally is a circular articulation of a moral rule for the treatment for certain people, demanding reference to how they must be treated alike, effectively a kind of distortion of their proportions. Gillespie’s argument, that people who are alike should be treated alike, only applies where the actor had a specific duty to such persons, introduces at once the convenient circularity of an axiom, and at once the convenient circularity of a deus ex machina. Browne’s explanation of a proportionality genus for rights implies that equality is in the nature of a fictive genus of fictive rights. Equality is an artificial axiomatic construct, cobbled together like a deus ex machina, to resolve the meaning of proportionality in assessing people’s equal receiving of their due.
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References
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Suppose, for example, that the framers of a rule differ about whether citizenship should be a prerequisite for voting. Those who advocate a requirement of citizenship will argue that their proposed rule treats people equally because it treats people alike who are alike (i.e., citizens), and treats people unalike who are unalike (i.e., all aliens). By the same token, however, those who oppose a requirement of citizenship will argue that their rule treats people equally by treating people alike who are essentially alike (i.e., citizens and resident aliens) and treating people unalike who are unalike (i.e., nonresident aliens). GM Rosberg, ‘Aliens and Equal Protection: Why Not the Right to Vote?’, Michigan Law Review, vol. 75, no. 5, 1977, pp. 1092-1136, p. 1102, (discussing disenfranchisement of aliens and arguing in favour of their right to vote). Needless to say, the foregoing dispute is not between equality and inequality, but between competing versions of equality. When parties disagree about whether people are substantially alike, however, the disagreement cannot be resolved by enjoining them to treat like people alike. The parties cannot know whether citizens and aliens are alike or unalike until they first agree on the substantive relevance of citizenship to voting. Once they agree on the substantive relevance of citizenship, they do not need to be told who is alike and who is unalike, or who should be treated alike and who should be treated unalike, because by then they already know.
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Consider, for example, the right of secured creditors to absolute preference over unsecured creditors; or the right of veterans of foreign wars or physically handicapped persons or women or members of racial minorities to preferential treatment of certain kinds over other groups; or the right of certain applicants for competitive positions to be selected on the basis of relative exam scores. In each case, to determine whether the claimant's substantive rights are satisfied one must first ascertain his relationship to others. P Westen, ‘The Empty Idea of Equality’, Harvard Law Review, vol. 95, no. 3, 1982, pp. 537-596, p. 552.
RK Fullinwider, The Reverse Discrimination Controversy: A Moral and Legal Analysis, Rowman and Littlefield, Totowa, 1980, pp. 221-222. (discussing the right to be free from torture as a right of equality).
A Menne, ‘Identity, Equality., Similarity: A Logico-Philosophical Investigation’, Ratio, vol. 4, no. 1, 1962, pp. 50 et seq., p. 51 ("'equal' presupposes two objects"); P Westen, ‘The Empty Idea of Equality’, Harvard Law Review, vol. 95, no. 3, 1982, pp. 537-596, p. 552.
DE Browne, ‘The Presumption of Equality’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 53, no. 1, 1975, pp. 46-53, p. 51.
ibid; To say that an apple is ‘like’ or ‘equal to’ an orange means that, despite their many differences, they each possess the feature or features that are relevant to an external criterion, whether those features be weight, surface area, or sugar content; to say that they are ‘unequal’ means that they do not share the relevant feature, whether it be color, taste, or juice content. This analysis also holds for ethical and legal statements of equality, the only difference being that, instead of testing the persons or things by a descriptive standard for determining which of them are the same, one tests them by a moral or legal standard for deciding which of them should be treated the same. In each case, however, the comparison for purposes of equality simply spells out what it means to have tested both subjects by the controlling standard of relevance. P Westen, ‘The Empty Idea of Equality’, Harvard Law Review, vol. 95, no. 3, 1982, pp. 537-596, p. 553.
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T Nagel, ‘The Meaning of Equality’, Washington University Law Quarterly, 1979, pp. 25-31 (discussing the right to basic economic subsistence in terms of "equality"); G Vlastos, ‘Justice and Equality’, in R Brandt (ed.), Social Justice, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1962, pp. 47-51. (discussing the entitlement to be free from pain in terms of "equality"); JR Lucas, ‘Against Equality’, Philosophy, vol. 40, no. 154, 1965, pp. 296 - 307, p. 298. (discussing same in terms of entitlements).
D Browne, ‘Nonegalitarian Justice’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 56, no. 1, 1978, pp. 48-60, p. 49. (referring to the "fundamental axiom, which is definitive of the concept of justice ... that each person must be rendered his due").
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P Westen, ‘The Empty Idea of Equality’, Harvard Law Review, vol. 95, no. 3, 1982, pp. 537-596, p. 556.
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