This chapter argues that natural law duties and corresponding human rights require attention to moral and metaphysical frameworks, and education into moral traditions sustaining those frameworks. If such traditions are eclipsed, or lost for a time, there will be deformations in our understanding and language concerning the relationship between the self and the moral universe around us; and, thus, to our understanding and application of human rights. In particular, the chapter examines the shift in language from ‘virtue’ to ‘values’ and ‘person’ to ‘individual’. It explores how the abstracted concepts of ‘values’ and ‘individual’ create confusions in the application of human rights. Instead, it is argued that the moral language supporting human rights application should be sustained within a metaphysical tradition. And, for such traditions to thrive, they require subsidiarity for what Habermas calls ‘life-worlds’ – the many and varied voluntary associations that make up human life in community. Without commitment to subsidiarity, the pursuit of mere techné will undercut the moral sources embedded within those life-worlds, which nourish understanding of and respect for human rights.

This chapter argues for a revised theory of moderate vaccine cosmopolitanism, grounded in a Thomistic natural law interpretation of the principle of solidarity, tempered by the principle of subsidiarity. Solidarity does call for love of neighbour, and therefore for global responsibilities of mutual care among nations. However, love of neighbour does not necessitate equality of treatment and resources, or equality of care and concern. Instead, it necessitates equity: love requires shared yet differentiated duties to care for those in need, according to their needs and our relationships to the most vulnerable. So, love tolerates – and even justifies – some partiality in taking care first of those in one’s own community, without abandoning outsiders to their own luck. This understanding of solidarity is predicated on the idea of equality of dignity – meaning, equal respectful consideration and loving regard among persons and nations. Equality of dignity is consistent with treating, caring, and being concerned with different people in different ways, according to their different needs and their different relationships to us, like the principle of subsidiarity suggests.

In this chapter the law scholars Haksoo Ko, Sangchul Park, and Yong Lim, analyse the way South Korea has been dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and its legal consequences. Instead of enforcing strict lockdowns, South Korea imposed several other measures, such as a robust AI-based contact tracing scheme. The chapter provides an overview of the legal framework and the technology which allowed South Korea to employ its technology-based contact tracing scheme. Additionally, the authors showcase the information system South Korea implemented, as well as the actual use of the data. The authors argue that South Korea has a rather stringent data-protection regime, which proved to be the biggest hurdle in implementing the contact tracing scheme. However, the country introduced a separate legal framework for extensive contact tracing after its bruising encounter with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2015 which was reactivated and provided government agencies with extensive authority to process personal data for epidemiological purposes. The AI-based technology built in the process of creating smart cities also proved handy as it was repurposed for contact tracing purposes.

Natural law and natural rights are contested categories among many modern Protestants, but were common legal and theological topics for their sixteenth-century forebearers. Early Protestant reformers echoed classical and scholastic teachings, and their natural law principles and natural rights overlapped with Catholic, humanist, and republican formulations in their day. But the reformers grounded their teachings in distinct accounts of the created order, human nature, the Ten Commandments, law and Gospel, divine sovereignty and natural order in the two kingdoms - giving their views a unique accent. This chapter samples the natural law and rights teachings of Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, the Magdeburg Confession, John Calvin, Christopher Goodman, and Johannes Althusius. They illustrate the hundreds of Protestant sources, by Lutherans and Calvinists, Anabaptists and Anglicans of various denominations. These teachings were a driving force of early modern Western democratic revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic; and influential in modern international declarations of rights, in the civil rights movement in the United States, and in various liberation movements in the Global South.

The New Natural Law Theory (NNLT) identifies the foundations of ethics in practical principles directing agents to aspects of human flourishing in an all-round reasonable manner. Other normative principles and concepts, including the concept of human rights, are understood in terms of their relationship to human flourishing, and the basic human goods that are constitutive aspects of that flourishing. NNLT thus possesses resources to explain the justification and importance of human rights, as well as the role rights talk plays in the overall economy of moral, political, and legal discourse. In this chapter, Section 2 discusses the logic of rights; Section 3 provides the general foundations for the justification of rights, both human and legal, in considerations of justice and common good. Section 4 looks at the paradigm case of human or natural rights: rights that are absolute and thus already conform to the logical structure of rights identified in Section 2. Section 5 identifies the scope of such rights as including all human beings. Section 6 addresses the relationship between human and legal rights. Finally, Section 7 addresses the metaphysical status of human rights.

This chapter argues that an adequate account of group rights requires an embedded understanding of moral duties and rights within the context of common action for a common good. Drawing from Alasdair MacIntyre, I explain why group agency for a common good, through various social practices, grounds a framework of natural justice with correlative duties and rights, including various group moral rights. This account of natural justice is completed by an appeal to the common agency of an institutionalised political community for a political common good. I argue that human rights are a subset of moral rights, which ‘cry out’ as a matter of justice for political enforcement or realisation, whether against violations of fundamental natural law precepts or dereliction of core political responsibilities. These include group rights where the protected aspects of personal human flourishing are pursued through the common action of groups, such as families, trade unions, religious communities, and political communities. Moreover, group rights are essential to human rights – human rights presuppose the group moral right of political authority to administer justice for the common good.

Modern human rights instruments reflect earlier transformations of natural rights into constitutional rights. The effect of this transformation was most apparent in the intertwining of natural rights with emerging conceptions of the separation of governmental powers. For this to take place, early modern natural law theory needed to abandon its defence of absolutist forms of government and embrace ideas developed within the common law. This chapter traces the progress of this surprising marriage. It shows how the concern of common lawyers to secure freedom under law by separating governmental powers came to be justified increasingly in terms of natural law, rather than by reference to English constitutional history. This discursive shift was given political expression in the American revolution and finally adopted into Immanuel Kant’s natural law theory as a requirement of practical reason. The essentially collaborative understanding of the relationship between legislature and judiciary which emerged is still of value in the debate between modern-day natural law theorists over the role of judicial power in the protection of human rights.

As a doctrine of positive international law, jus cogens superveniens gives juridical effect to the natural law’s prohibition of conduct violative of aspects of the transnational common good that reflect absolute human rights. In order to be fully valid in the sense that it commands a moral obligation of compliance, a measure for regulating the life of a community must be reasonable. A measure cannot be reasonable if its purpose is not the preservation or enhancement of the common good. The common good is the full array of physical, cultural, and institutional arrangements that facilitate the ability of persons in their various communities, including the transnational community, to advance their human flourishing. Human rights are conclusions of practical reason that always constitute essential aspects of the common good. Some human rights are ‘absolute’ in that they are not subject to limitation or restriction on any grounds, because any such limitation or restriction can do nothing but damage the common good. Although natural law is binding in reason, the positive law and other juridical measures of official authority are frequently required to effectively serve the common good.

This chapter argues that Aquinas’ conception of eternal law implies a particular way of understanding human freedom, reflected in his treatment of natural rights. To make this argument plausible, it is necessary to show that Aquinas does endorse some notion of subjective natural rights. While he does not have a theory of natural rights, he does have a working knowledge of the legal norms of his time, including practices of claiming and vindicating natural rights. He accepts, seemingly without question, that individuals can, under certain circumstances, claim something or resist the claim of another on the basis of a natural or divine jus, or right, including most notably a right to material necessities of life, and a right to make decisions for one’s young children. Importantly, these are not just asserted as objective duties; he defends the power of individuals to assert these rights without fear of punishment or coercion, even in cases in which one asserts a right to do something wrong. These aspects of Aquinas’ thought raise illuminating connections between the theological conception of eternal law and an account of natural rights, taking Aquinas’ remarks as a starting point.

The law scholar Dustin Lewis explores the requirements of international law with regard to the employments of AI-related tools and techniques in armed conflict. The scope of this chapter is not limited to Lethal Autonomous Weapons (AWS) but also encompasses other AI-related tools and techniques related to warfighting, detention, and humanitarian services. After providing an overview of international law applicable to armed conflict, the author outlines some preconditions necessary to respect international law. According to Lewis, current international law essentially presupposes humans – and not artificial, non-humans – as legal agents. From that premise, the author argues that any employment of AI-related tools or techniques in an armed conflict needs to be susceptible to being administered, discerned, attributed, understood, and assessed by human agents.

In the past decade, Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a general-purpose tool has become a disruptive force globally. By leveraging the power of artificial neural networks, deep learning frameworks can now translate text from hundreds of languages, enable real-time navigation for everyone, recognise pathological medical images, as well as enable many other applications across all sectors in society. However, the enormous potential for innovation and technological advances and the chances that AI systems provide come with hazards and risks that are not yet fully explored, let alone fully understood. One can stress the opportunities of AI systems to improve healthcare, especially in times of a pandemic, provide automated mobility, support the protection of the environment, protect our security, and otherwise support human welfare. Nevertheless, we must not neglect that AI systems can pose risks to individuals and societies; for example by disseminating biases, by undermining political deliberation, or by the development of autonomous weapons. This means that there is an urgent need for responsible governance of AI systems. This Handbook shall be a basis to spell out in more detail what could become relevant features of Responsible AI and how we can achieve and implement them at the regional, national, and international level. Hence, the aim of this Handbook is to address some of the most pressing philosophical, ethical, legal, and societal challenges posed by AI.

In this chapter, the philosophers Oliver Mueller and Boris Essmann address AI-supported neurotechnology, especially Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCIs) that may in the future supplement and restore functioning in agency-limited individuals or even augment or enhance capacities for natural agency. The authors propose a normative framework for the evaluation of neurotechnological and AI-assisted agency based on ‘cyberbilities’. These are capabilities that emerge from human–machine interactions in which agency is distributed across human and artificial elements. The authors conclude by providing a list of cyberbilities that is meant to support the well-being of individuals.

The chapter by the philosopher Catrin Misselhorn provides an overview of the most central debates in artificial morality and machine ethics. Artificial moral agents are AI systems which are able to recognise the morally relevant aspects of a situation and take them into account in their decisions and actions. Misselhorn shows that artificial morality is not just a matter of Science Fiction scenarios but rather an issue that has to be considered today. She lays the conceptual foundations of artificial morality and discusses the ethical issues that arise. She addresses questions like: which morality should be part of an AI system? Can AI systems be aligned with human morality, or do they need a machine-specific morality? Are there decisions, which should never be transferred to machines? Could artificial morality have impacts on human morality if it becomes more pervasive? These and other questions relating to AI are discussed and answered.

This chapter begins with an etymological and historical elucidation of the terms conscientia and synderesis. Philosophical and theological reflection on these terms, beginning with St. Jerome and proceeding through thinkers such as Peter Lombard and Philip the Chancellor, constitutes the background against which St. Thomas Aquinas develops his understanding, not only of conscientia and synderesis, but also of objective right (ius) or rights. Much of the debate regarding synderesis, the infallible basis of conscientia, concerns whether it is a power or habitus. Aquinas settles on understanding synderesis as a ‘habit’ of the potential intellect – which, following Aristotle, he understands as a sort of ‘blank slate’ upon which things can be written. One of the things written on the habit of synderesis is the practical version of the principle of non-contradiction: ‘good is to be done and pursued, evil avoided’. This allows him to develop a theory according to which objective rights are primary, although not to the exclusion of subjective rights. It also allows those in agreement with Aquinas to exclude subjective rights that contradict established objective rights.

In this chapter, the law scholar Ralf Poscher sets out to show how AI challenges the traditional understanding of the right to data protection and presents an outline of an alternative conception that better deals with emerging AI technologies. Firstly, Poscher explains how the traditional conceptualisation of data protection as an independent fundamental right on its own collides with AI’s technological development, given that AI systems do not provide the kind of transparency required by the traditional approach. Secondly, the author proposes an alternative model, a no-right thesis, which shifts the focus from data protection as an independent right to other existing fundamental rights, such as liberty and equality. He argues that this allows us to step back from the idea that each and every instance of personal data processing concerns a fundamental right. Instead, it is important to assess how an AI system ‘behaves’, what type of risks it generates, and which substantive fundamental rights are being affected.