6.2.1 The Scenarios of Normative Transformation

The transfer of judicial ideas and norms by itself is a phenomenon that is detectable wherever and whenever there is a confrontation of two or more (more or less) established socio-judicial environments.Footnote ² Various scenarios are possible. The first concerns a situation where a certain normative-ideological regulatory framework is carried to another socio-geographic environment, but is countered by an existing framework of normative ideas and practices. This scenario can be labelled the socio-geographic transposition of law and can be illustrated by the process of imposing ‘colonial’ supremacy upon territories of the indigenous or more established but different cultures. Saliha Belmessous has shown that colonisation of indigenous people in the Americas, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand was countered not only by force, but also by ideas and understandings of a law that should apply between people. She uses the expression of indigenous legal opposition to the European legislative framework and justifications.Footnote ³ From the perspective of legal scholarship, this opposition means contestation between ideas and procedures; that is, mechanisms for how the ideas are made to govern. Non-coherence theory has the assumption that there is no or only a minor contestation because contestation usually leads to the disappearance of one competing ideology. Yet such contestation may appear in time, when the normative power of the digital domain grows through self-normativity.

The second scenario concerns regime change, leading to the ideological transposition of law. Legal scholarship dominated by comparative methodology does not conclusively show the possibility of the full replacement of established legal ideologies and structures by an incompatible set of ideas, leading to an entirely different understanding of how the law should govern society.Footnote ⁴ The overthrow of the Russian tsarist regime by the Bolsheviks led to the enactment of socialist ideology, but the administrative and court systems were largely functionally retained. The French Revolution led perhaps, at least initially, to even broader chaos in terms of laws and procedures.Footnote ⁵ Regime change may go hand in hand with the adoption of legal norms from a regime falling into the same ideological paradigm.Footnote ⁶ The common characteristic of regime change is the generic variance of the legal framework before and after the change, where the variance can always be characterised by degree. Such a scenario would not make sense in the initial stages after the appearance of the digital domain, for the simple reason that there was no regime to be changed. But this does not exclude the possibility that the regime may have appeared in time, either in disguise or openly, which is then subject to the aspiration of regime change from the offline domain. Yet the reverse is also possible, namely the aspiration of the digital domain to trigger the legal regime change of the offline domain.

The third scenario concerns a situation where people and institutions enter unknown territory with their own discursive history, ideas, and values, but for one reason or another note that their regulatory and ideological equipment does not fully work. We can term this scenario the transposition of law into a normative carte blanche. This position might take for granted that the digital domain could have been characterised – in the early years – as such an empty sheet open to the transposition of normative regulation; that is, there were no countering normative forces, and the offline regulatory and conceptual framework should have appeared welcome in the online context. A deeper examination questions this predisposition for the reason of the inadequacy of protection thesis, which I have developed elsewhere to explain the element of novelty in human rights development.Footnote ⁷ This thesis claims that the development of new human rights is explainable through the recognition of the incapability of established human rights to provide adequate protection for certain groups in comparison with others, or that the novel contemporary conditions challenge the capability of an established human right to provide sufficient protection of an important social value. The common element of both reasons leading to the articulation of new human rights according to the inadequacy of protection thesis is contestation. Application of this thesis to the internet is at the root of questions about whether it is possible to provide protection in the online domain that is comparable to the offline by using concepts entirely placed in and originating from offline, or whether offline remedies can be effectively applied online.

6.2.2 Reflections on the Inadequacy of Protection Thesis

The inadequacy of protection thesis when applied to the internet is offline-morphic and practice-dependent. Offline-morphic means the view from the offline domain, which is analogous to when an animal rights lawyer projects her understandings onto other species and concludes that they exhibit behavioural patterns comparable to humans.Footnote ⁸

The inadequacy of protection thesis offers a practical lens through which to examine non-coherence theory. This thesis posits a dichotomy between online and offline protection, where frameworks deemed adequate in the offline world may prove inadequate online. This offline-morphic perspective, analogous to projecting human understanding onto non-human contexts, highlights the subjective nature of assessing the adequacy of protection in the digital environment. The practice-dependent aspect of this thesis emphasises empirical observation. The presence of contestation – detailed arguments regarding the compatibility of offline human rights norms with online realities – indicates a non-coherent image. The theory distinguishes mere disagreement from actual contestation, requiring a critical mass of actors recognising the inadequacy of the protection. This contestation is manifested in various ways, including conflicting categorisations of legal transposition processes (e.g., the direct/indirect and receptive/unreceptive models). This contestation also reveals the evolving and dynamic nature of the non-coherent image of digital human rights, as the discrepancy between online and offline frameworks is not a static phenomenon but is subject to change over time.

6.2.3 The Dual Nature Thesis

Discussions about the non-coherence theory of digital human rights have raised the question of how to position this theory in the framework of existing approaches to legal transformations. What is the novel aspect of this theory – when the topic of transfers has been known as long as different cultures have collided – can and has been asked. My response is through the dual nature of the human rights thesis. It says that differently from legal transformation approaches where one domain has to yield to another, the digital and non-digital coexist in parallel, using similar human rights words, which carry a meaning in variation. The non-coherent image of human rights in the digital domain does not appear immediately and develops over time. It becomes evident once attempts to find in the digital domain an almost analogous image from the non-digital human rights system have proven illusory. The theory of non-coherence can explain this through the concept of the multi-stakeholderist veil thesis and the weakness of the sameness of rights doctrine.

6.2.4 The Multi-stakeholderist Veil Thesis

Multi-stakeholderism of internet governance, as formulated by Joanna Kulesza, is ‘a distributed policymaking model based on the voluntary cooperation of key actors, usually identified as: states, business, and civil society, operating “in their respective roles” through “rough consensus and running code”’.Footnote ⁹ For more than one party to connect, a genuine willingness from both sides is needed, otherwise the logical sequence of rhetorical functions comes to a standstill. In the digital human rights landscape it can be viewed as an attempt to incrementally transpose the offline human rights framework into the digital domain. Multi-stakeholderism as an end result in itself carries primarily non-regulatory aspirations, such as an advocacy tool for civil society or ‘whitewashing’ the aspirations of stakeholders who are more equal than others.Footnote ¹⁰

This thesis is inspired by the various transposition scenarios described earlier. The rise of the internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s can be characterised by the expansion of technological horizons, overshadowing the absence of internet-specific regulation, thereby assuming that the law offline as we know it can be easily transposed to the digital. This was the period of transformation to carte blanche. The recognition of the unclear image led to the ideological transposition through the multi-stakeholderism scenario, where co-creation and dialogue were viewed as arriving at a clear image, while still relying on the conceptual and procedural building blocks from offline. In parallel, the online community construed its own understandings of human rights in the digital domain, either implicitly or explicitly intending to conceptually counter the offline framework. By the time the limitations of the multi-stakeholder approach became evident, the only scenario left was the rivalry between competing regulatory frameworks; that is, between the horizontal and vertical governance models. This condition of regulatory uncertainty and proliferation has an axiomatic effect on human rights in the digital domain, which can be viewed as an element of non-coherence. It has to suffice to say at this point that multishakeholderism as a holistic approach applied to reconcile the non-digital and digital domains has failed. Non-coherence has become a permanent condition of the coexistence of human rights in the digital and non-digital domains. Multi-stakeholderism is no longer needed.

6.2.5 About the Sameness of Rights Approach

With some imagination, it is possible to cite the claim of sameness from the Geneva Principles in 2003.Footnote ¹¹ This result of an effort for which there are no traveaux preparatoires, that lacks argumentation in support of its claims, and is thus representing a clear example of an instrument of faith. It reaffirms ‘the universality, indivisibility, interdependence and interrelation of all human rights and fundamental freedoms […]’.Footnote ¹² One can say that such a statement is not a full acknowledgement of the idea of sameness, but it conveys the impression that human rights are not domain-dependent. Then it took almost ten years to reach an expressis verbis statement of the sameness in an international instrument. This is the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council resolution from 29 June 2012, which ‘[a]ffirms that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, […]’.Footnote ¹³ Sometimes the idea of the sameness does not appear as a direct statement, but is deductible from the context. Take for example the UN Human Rights Committee’s General comment No. 34 to Article 19 of the UN General Declaration from 2011.Footnote ¹⁴ This comment acknowledges in paragraph 15 the substantial change in communication practices around the world owing to information and communication technologies. And yet implicitly it is based on accepting full transposition of human rights principles from offline to online.

It may be sufficient here to point to this idea’s ubiquity on the basis of the commendable work of others. For example, Dror-Shpoliansky and Shany propose the normative equivalency paradigm, having shown how in a series of resolutions the Human Rights Committee and the General Assembly ‘have reiterated the notion that human rights apply in the digital “online world” as they apply in the “offline world”’.Footnote ¹⁵ The normative equivalency, as they are asserting, contains a major flaw, which is about considering ‘digital technology as a new tool or arena for exercising offline rights or governmental powers, as opposed to a conceptualization of digital space as giving rise to new human condition and governance domain’.Footnote ¹⁶ This view represents non-coherence between digital and non-digital domains in a narrow sense, not encompassing well-established rights from the offline domain, such as the right to privacy, and covers the so-called second generation rights.

I have raised two main objections against the doctrine of the sameness of rights. The first objection is from relativity and the second objection is from practicality. The objection from relativity is related to the basic or fundamental building blocks of human rights. There are certain ideas that are difficult to justify through explication, and even then, the element of belief in something remains relevant. For example, take the idea of the universality of human rights. Is this a premise that can be verified through rational argumentation, or is this the result of discursive, political, and judicial practices? But its importance is evident from asking what would happen to the suggestion of the omnipotence of human rights if the idea was given up. The sameness idea carries similar connecting and rhetorical force. In today’s human rights discourses, policies, judicial judgments, and civil society approaches, in other words, everywhere, any answer to the question of whether human rights offline and online are the same or not has far-reaching consequences. An affirmative answer means coherence of content and leads to the subsequent question of the breadth of non-coherence in enforcement instruments. However, if the negation of the sameness idea could claim validity as a general principle, then we can say that human rights online do not exist in a similar fashion as (we are accustomed to know them) in the offline domain. This leads us to say that the theory of non-coherence is one of relativity.

The objection in practicality terms is articulated by the advocacy group Article 19. This group translated the reaffirmation that ‘the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online’ in questions of practicality. It says that unless greater priority is placed on addressing violations and changes to law and practice, this statement of sameness is no more ‘than words just written on paper’.Footnote ¹⁷ The non-coherence theory explains this image by suggesting that the sameness of rights remains at the highest level of generality, expressed in words only, and starts to evaporate once we enter the sphere of more detailed content and enforcement. There continue parallel roads with occasional crossings, to use a figurative expression.

6.2.6 Double Nature of Privacy

To give a robust example of the coexistence of the non-coherent concepts of rights, it can be shown that privacy offline exhibits different features to privacy online. The formulation of the right to privacy in the contemporary era is widely credited to Warren and Brandeis’s formulation from 1890 as an interest ‘to be let alone’.Footnote ¹⁸ Online privacy exhibits the opposite, namely, an interest not to be let alone. I have explained these opposites through fundamental differences of entry into non-digital and digital domains. We enter the non-digital domain involuntarily. This is the existentialist viewpoint, Jean-Paul Sartre’s view that we are thrown into freedom, yet we do not choose to be free.Footnote ¹⁹ It can be said that the right to privacy in its original manifestation is part of the existentialist ‘package’, which we may or may not choose to utilise. The entry into the digital domain is different and carries both voluntary and involuntary elements. Voluntary entry is the result of the conscious choice to use the digital domain for social communication, obtaining information, interacting with official government structures, or accessing vital services from private providers, such as financial or medical sectors. Involuntary entry happens despite one’s position in regard to the digital domain and is connected to e-state and blockchain technologies, which are widely used to maintain official records of events and persons. A few more sentences are in order to express these differences in more detail.

Voluntary entry is related to the interest to exhibit oneself in the digital domain in the most suitable manner. It is not accompanied by the positive validity of one’s image but is triggered by what one wishes to put forward and at the same time hide. Such a digital image has been termed the digital identity. Michalkiewicz-Kadziela and Milczarek have noted that ‘human identity on the internet functions on completely different terms than outside it. The internet gives unlimited possibilities of creating subjective elements of one’s own identity, but it also allows a change of objective elements’.Footnote ²⁰ There are warnings from policy organisations that digital identity does not fit into the framework of human rights, and it entails a threat leading to totalitarianism.Footnote ²¹

Involuntary entry into the digital domain is caused by the growing reliance on e-solutions by public and private authorities offering essential services. It is practically impossible to avoid that various digital surveillance mechanisms record us under Big Data, and that financial or medical institutions record our personal information. Here it is impossible to raise the interest of being left alone, and the only claim is related to requesting that the data be accurate through the newly emerged right to erasure.Footnote ²² Once someone enters involuntarily into the blockchain system, their interest to be let alone becomes meaningless. As put eloquently by Sullivan, this is because of ‘considerable challenges in establishing not only that “I am who I say I am” but in establishing “I am not who the identity register says I am”’.Footnote ²³

At this point there is noticeable prima facie variance in the meanings of privacy offline and online. The variance is of such a degree that it should be more appropriate to refrain from the usage of the expression ‘privacy’ for the online environment. Non-coherence is centre stage here. Because the digital and non-digital domains are interconnected and someone leads parallel lives in both domains, the right to privacy has meaning in the digital reality only so far as it enables the realisation of the interest to be let alone in the non-digital reality.

6.2.7 Concerns Related to Time

Among epistemological concerns the one related to time is of significance. In the non-digital domain, time can be regarded as a quality assurance for knowledge development, and as such is considered to have a positive effect upon human rights adjudication practice. This is because of the possibilities of reflection and discourse. However, the element of time becomes negativity in the digital domain because the time window for resolving online human rights conflicts appears immensely narrow. Liu articulates this aspect as follows: ‘Instead of valuing enduring or permanent truths (the temporal version of “high” knowledge), the digital age is preoccupied with information of much shorter durations – time spans plunging down to the diurnal rhythm of blog posts, the microseconds of a data packet’s TTL (time to live) […]’.Footnote ²⁴

Elsewhere, I have shown that shortness of time weakens one of the basic instruments for offline rights conflict resolution – balancing.Footnote ²⁵ Within any framework of judicial balancing, the courts have as much time as needed to claim a correct assessment of the concrete importance of conflicting rights and establish a proper balance. Conversely on the internet, the element of time is non-existent, as it would lead to the non-effective, retrospective recognition that rights were violated and proper balance was not achieved. Effective balancing online depends on swift decisions about whether certain information published overrides someone else’s concern about an intrusion into his or her private domain or other rights. Here time is a different concern from the understanding that with the passage of time the balance of interests may reverse; for example, when processing personal data.Footnote ²⁶ The shortness of time for reasoned decision-making can easily lead ultimately to the rejection of the rationality of online balancing.

A related doubt about whether balancing as we know it from the offline domain is at all possible in the digital domain is related to the matter of transparency. In online balancing via private entities, the transparency deficit of portals has been raised as a concern. This matter has been noticed for longer than a decade and there are calls to address it, but nothing has changed. For instance, the Council of Europe has stated that ‘Internet service providers should put in place appropriate, clear, open and efficient procedures to respond within reasonable time limits to complaints from internet users alleging breaches of the principles included in the foregoing provisions […]’.Footnote ²⁷ The UN calls upon ‘all States to consider formulating, through transparent and inclusive processes with all stakeholders, and adopting national internet-related public policies that have the objective of universal access and enjoyment of human rights at their core’.Footnote ²⁸ Similarly, La Rue encourages ‘corporations to establish clear and unambiguous terms of service in line with international human rights norms and principles […]’.Footnote ²⁹

The transparency deficit leads to a phenomenon that can be termed the legitimacy deficit in relation to balancing conflicting rights online. There is a growing academic discourse on the topic. Enguerrand Marique and Yseult Marique search for the source of legitimacy when private platforms set rules, monitor compliance with their own rules, and finally, apply sanctions.Footnote ³⁰ Noting the unilateral character of the ‘contractual’ horizontal relationship, they proceed to highlight that online portals give the ‘take it or leave it’ option without any possibility of negotiation, which in turn leaves the issue of the legitimacy of private content assessment undefined. It is suggested that new forms of legitimacy may develop based on public–private or hybrid interactions in setting and enforcing the regulatory order of the internet.Footnote ³¹ The legitimacy deficit is currently also apparent in a mathematical solution with practice-affecting aspiration, proposed by a multi-country scholarly community. For instance, a simplified model by Zufall, Kimura, and Peng uses the elements of privacy of information and nature of information, while the relevance of the intrusion is affected by time.Footnote ³² This solution isolates and polarises just one element from the conflicting rights to be balanced, because privacy of information is just one aspect of the level of intrusion into privacy, and nature of information is just one aspect allowing to determine the scope of the freedom of expression. The matter of algorithmic simplicity was to be expected and possibly characterises some or many solutions in practical use today.

These brief observations convey the perception that balancing online stands at significant variance from balancing online owing to legitimacy and transparency deficits. This is a clear phenomenon of non-coherence.

6.2.8 Some Additional Theses

Space available for this chapter also permits me to give a brief introduction to some additional theses connected to the non-coherence theory.

While exploring the notion of digital dignity, I have formulated the relativisation of core values thesis, which is a logical consequence of the recognition that in the digital domain there are no absolute human rights – the space allocated to this chapter allows me only to make this as an assertion, which means that everything becomes relative. This is because the basic norm in which offline stands at the bottom of the structure of human rights norms and principles itself becomes relative. Online dignity does not possess the feature of absoluteness that we are accustomed to accepting offline – as the core value written into the preambles of various human rights instruments. Here in the digital domain the key notion of dignity will be measured against ‘competing’ rights and values. But it would no longer correspond to the place of dignity in the offline human rights realm. In this case, the weight of dignity in the offline and online domains becomes non-coherent. This lies in the simple recognition that while dignity is a constant offline, it is relative online.

A novel aspect of the transfer of human rights images and ideas can be described through the ‘comfort in non-coherence thesis’. This refers to the simplistic perception that we prefer to operate in a realm that is at least to some extent familiar to us, as opposed to being confronted with a reality that is completely new, unfamiliar, and unpredictable. In such a reality, human rights ideas and concepts would not be meaningful, and the only reason for using human rights language would be to approach the new reality with tools that are familiar to us from the physical realm. The high level of variance in observations between non-digital and digital domains has become part of the mainstream in judicial discourse. For instance, Kettemann, Peukert, and Spiecker write in their 2022 edited volume on law in the digital space: ‘The book reveals that the number of specifically digital and global phenomena, which raise unique regulatory questions, is increasing, and that the applicable digital law is characterised by private ordering, transnational standardisation, economisation but at the same time by persistent and possibly deepening legal fragmentation’.Footnote ³³ Magarin lists structural concerns connected to limited free speech online in need of regulatory attention, among these being inequalities of access, power relationships among governments, private speech intermediaries and internet users, and the ways in which the internet’s architecture complicates effective regulation.Footnote ³⁴ All these observations are about non-coherence between the two domains under review. The comfort thesis says that we prefer to live in an environment of double standards and fragmentation instead of an environment where one sphere is devoid of any normativity, be it rational or non-rational.

6.3.1 Conclusion by the Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT

For the first time in my writing experience, I asked ChatGPT to write a short summary of my writing. I submitted the manuscript of the non-coherence theory of digital human rights, which is around 250 pages, and asked it to write a short one-page summary. The resulting text is as follows, which for the purposes of clarity is in quotation marks. The only curiosity of the text that follows – which I endorse for the purposes of knowledge sharing – is the choice of the only reference. Why ChatGPT chose Merleau-Ponty remains unknown.

‘The theory’s core premise is that the transposition of offline human rights law and practice to the online environment often results in a distorted, “non-coherent” image. This non-coherence stems from inherent discrepancies between the offline and online contexts, rendering the simple transferability of established norms problematic. The resulting lack of clarity regarding the application, realization, and enforcement of human rights online necessitates a re-evaluation of existing frameworks.

‘The non-coherence theory emerges from the observation that established human rights principles, their implementation, related obligations, and remedies for violations, as understood in the “offline” world, lack clear analogues in the digital sphere. The central question becomes: Do offline human rights rules and principles maintain their integrity online, or do they undergo modifications, distortions, or even cease to apply altogether? This uncertainty, termed “non-coherence”, arises when the transposition from the offline to the online context results in significant differences. While the terms “variance” and “distortion” are used interchangeably in this context, the critical distinction lies in the degree of difference. Minor variances may be acceptable, but substantial divergences indicate a distortion that may render the offline framework inapplicable or limit its scope in the digital context. This core concept challenges the assumption of the straightforward transposability of human rights from the offline to the online world. The theory anticipates potential objections, particularly regarding its theoretical underpinnings and the empirical evidence supporting its claims.

‘These models differ fundamentally in their approach: vertical governance relies on the state’s coercive power, while horizontal governance involves a partnership of diverse actors. Non-coherence theory is not concerned with the content of rights defined by these models but rather with the processes by which rights are established, enforced, and remedied. The simultaneous operation of these differing models illustrates the inherent unpredictability and inconsistency in the digital domain, undermining the notion of a unified and coherent human rights framework online. The coexistence and interaction between these models highlight the complex and often conflicting nature of online regulation.

‘Non-coherence theory also explores the ontological and epistemological dimensions of digital human rights. Ontologically, the theory questions the very existence of human rights in the digital space, posing the fundamental question: Do human rights exist intrinsically for sentient beings entering the virtual realm or are they conferred by some external authority? The theory argues that even under ideal discursive conditions, the transposition of human rights concepts from the offline to the online domain leads to a loss of meaning and clarity, akin to Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the subjective experience of colour.Footnote ³⁵ The theory’s focus is on how the offline image of human rights is reflected online, implying that even distorted reflections are meaningful for understanding the non-coherence. The inherent limitations of the practice-independent approach raise the question of the continued validity of applying non-positivist categories such as “human rights” to the digital domain, particularly given their possible transformation into merely “legal rights”. This analysis requires an acknowledgement of the inherent subjectivity and context-dependence of human rights interpretations, and the theory’s emphasis on how different frameworks interact within the digital environment highlights this further.

‘Epistemologically, the theory examines how knowledge about human rights is created, articulated, and enforced in the digital sphere. The theory identifies a polarisation of views regarding the coherence of online and offline knowledge creation processes. It argues that even if the means of knowledge creation differ, this does not necessarily invalidate the claim of normative validity, highlighting the role of processes such as communicative rationality and the “wisdom of the crowd” in generating credible knowledge. However, the theory suggests a relativisation of truth in digital human rights. What is considered truthful in one domain may not be considered truthful in the other, highlighting the paradigm-dependent nature of truth claims and questioning the universal applicability of non-positivist concepts. The theory concludes that the non-coherence of digital human rights is not simply a hypothesis but an inherent feature of the digital environment, requiring a reconceptualisation of human rights frameworks in this space. Further research would need to elaborate on the specifics of how competing online and offline normative systems interact and the implications for the future of digital human rights.’

6.3.2 Conclusion by the Author

The central conclusion of non-coherence theory is relativity. It shows how the division into absolute and relative human rights evaporates in the digital domain, and the human rights landscape becomes uni-layered. Basic norms that stand at the base of the human rights architecture in the physical world – such as dignity – become relativised and subject to balancing with other principles of a lower degree of generality. Balancing that constrains and directs human rights adjudication in the physical world assumes a completely different nature owing to transparency and legitimacy deficits. Relativity deprives human rights of their universal power. Competing systems of human rights can claim equal legitimacy, which leads to the validation of conflicting contents of concrete human rights bearing similar labels.

Yet there can be some commonalities that are applicable in any domain where human rights can exist, independently from their concrete content. These commonalities would have universal nature, which restores at least partially the idea of universality into the human rights landscape. Building on the analogy with quantum mechanics, it can be asked whether certain human rights exist in a shared state. This would mean, for instance, whether the right to privacy exists in a shared state with the right to freedom of expression; or whether the right to reputation – leaving aside the issue of whether such a self-standing right can be justified – exists in a shared state with the right of access to information. If the premise of such a shared state is correct, then it would follow that change in the scope and meaning of one right (particle) in this shared state leads to a simultaneous change to the opposite in the other right (particle). To give a concrete example, if the scope of the right to privacy is broadening, then the scope of the right to freedom of expression has to narrow. Such correlation would then be assumed. To give an abstract example from the other side, when we can measure the broadening of the right to freedom of expression, say in an online portal, we know without additional measuring that the scope of the right to privacy is narrowing. For human rights, the matter is related to, first and foremost, the relative weight of rights against one another. A new thesis can be advanced. I would term this the equilibrium of relative rights thesis, which says that for those rights existing in a shared state, when the relative weight of one right increases, the relative weight of another right has to decrease by the respective amount. Validation of the universality of the equilibrium of relative rights thesis could partly restore universality to the human rights discourse.