Les études présentées sous le présent thème, à l'exception des contributions de Kai Nielsen et de Katia Boustany, sont l'oeuvre de membres de l'Équipe de Recherche en Éthique Sociale (ERES), rattachée au département de philosophie de l'UQAM. L'ERES est une équipe multidisciplinaire (philosophie, droit, sociologie…) qui aborde les aspects éthiques des problèmes contemporains dans une approche où l'éthique est perçue comme issue des pratiques sociales et où le savoir des sciences sociales est mis à contribution.

En cette période de remise en question de l'État Providence, les travaux de l'ERES ont d'abord porté sur les théories contemporaines de justice distributive et ce, particulièrement en regard des oeuvres de John Rawls et de Robert Nozick. Cette incursion dans la philosophie politique et morale contemporaine, qui a déjà fait l'objet de publications, nous a conduit à l'élaboration d'un programme de recherche dont l'objectif était d'évaluer la pertinence du discours sur les droits.

Legal recognition of new, “third-generation” human rights is often said to devaluate human rights as such. I argue that arguments of this kind 1) are circular, presupposing that legally existing rights are the only legitimate ones, 2) are not without precedent, and indeed pertain to the very practice of modern rights discourse. In conclusion, I hypothesize that the argument expresses a fear of the potential of political democracy.

A critique of moral rights raises an apparently inevitable dilemma: one either affirms the operational nature of these rights, subjecting them to the requirements of positivism, and in so doing subscribes to moral conventionalism, or else one stresses the moral cohesion of a system of rights and focuses on grounding criteria, settling for moral rights devoid of practical effect. Drawing on a model of the operation of legal systems, the article aims to demonstrate that it is possible to reconcile coherentism in the context of the emergence of moral rights with positivism in terms of their conditions of application. The argument postulates an analogy between legal and moral systems as rationally determined social practice, but does not imply that moral rights can be reduced to legal rights.

It is argued that there are no moral or legal rights that may never rightly be overridden no matter what the consequences. There are human rights which are inalienable while still being rightly overrideable in certain circumstances. Even rights-based constructivist accounts of human rights do not provide a grounding for morality that escapes consequentialist critique. But the proper form of consequentialism is a weak form of consequentialism which is distinguished from utilitarian consequentialism.

The article deals with the issue of the basis of social justice. It notes the inconsistency in the various theories of distributive justice and approaches this from a perspective of the categories of rights which may acknowledge or reject theories of libertarian allegiance and the many egalitarian theories with their notion of the distribution of property. The conflictual nature of these rights stems from their being “declared” rights in particular economic, political and social conjunctures, necessarily expressing particular interests which cannot be reduced to a common ground. The article contrasts this notion of rights, with its accompanying argument demonstrating their sacred, inalienable or natural character, with a notion of “disputed” rights. This notion is articulated through a model drawing from Habermas in which rights are presented as the product of rational consensus. Thus conceived, rights can play a homogenous regulatory role in the creation of property distribution mechanisms.

Discourse on social rights does not take into account the Church's assumption of responsibility for social needs in the feudal era, since this constituted a moral obligation. The article aims at demonstrating that we should seek the basis for current social rights in feudal social institutions. To do so, the author examines religious discourse which led to the institutionalization of social assistance and suggests a perspective on feudal institutions which does not stem from the modern notion of rights.

A regulatory framework for nuclear technology was created early on at national and international levels. Essentially, it aimed at dealing with the high-risk component of a set of activities. Nuclear regulation, which often derogates from the common law, raises a number of questions pertaining to the relationship between the legal order and the technological order, particularly with respect to the compliance of the regulatory process with contemporary social values (environment and fundamental rights). Moreover, the major role played by scientific experts in elaborating and formulating norms applicable to the nuclear sector may affect the balance of power and the role of public bodies in the exercise of democracy. An analysis and comparison of various national situations through distinct legal practices lead to the conclusion that new patterns should be conceived to regulate the relationship among techno-industry, society and political situations in order to deal with concerns expressed about civilian nuclear activities.