2014 Blackfriars Lecture Series
Human Rights, the national interest and the will of the people
Fr Frank Brennan SJ
Blackfriars Building, Room B10,
Australian Catholic University
Cnr Antill St and Phillip Avenue, Watson
Thursday, 10 April 2014
Larry Siedentop, a long-time Fellow of Keble College at Oxford, has recently
published his book Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism. He
does not consider it mere coincidence “that liberal secularism developed in the
Christian West”. He assumes that “if we are to understand the relationship between
beliefs and social institutions – that is, to understand ourselves – then we have to take
a very long view”. Looking back at the French Revolution, he assesses the positions
of the the anti-clericals who were followers of Voltaire and the religious camp “who
saw the separating of church and state as nothing less than an insurrection against
God, public denial of beliefs which had shaped Europe”. Two centuries on, he thinks
that the old antagonism still lurks below the surface. However he notes: “The
religious camp have come, by and large to accept civil liberty and religious pluralism.
The anti-clericals have – with the exception of hardline Marxists and writers such as
Richard Dawkins – given up on the attempt to extirpate religious belief.” He
identifies Europe’s undeclared civil war: “The visceral reaction of the French left to
the prospect of acknowledging the Christian roots of Europe has its counterpart in
much church rhetoric deploring the growth of Godless secularism”. He says this civil
war is tragic and unnecessary:
It is tragic because, by identifying secularism with non-belief, with indifference and materialism, it
deprives Europe of moral authority, playing into the hands of those who are only too anxious to portray
Europe as decadent and without conviction. It is unnecessary because it rests on a misunderstanding of
the nature of secularism. Properly understood, secularism can be seen as Europe’s noblest achievement
which should be its primary contribution to the creation of a world order, while different religious
beliefs continue to contend for followers. Secularism is Christianity’s gift to the world, ideas and
practices which have often turned against ‘excesses’ of the Christian Church itself.
What is the crux of secularism? It is that belief in an underlying or moral equality of humans implies
that there is a sphere in which each should be free to make his or her own decisions, a sphere of
conscience and free action. That belief is summarised in the central value of classical liberalism: the
commitment to ‘equal liberty’. Is this indifference or non-belief? Not at all. It rests on the firm belief
that to be human means being a rational and moral agent, a free chooser with responsibility for one’s
actions. It puts a premium on conscience rather than the ‘blind’ following of rules. It joins rights with
duties to others.
One of the delights of the papacy of Pope Francis, a Jesuit, is that the old debates
about conscience and authority have been put to rest. The Church is not seen as the
crucible of all wisdom. Secularism is no longer a dirty word. We can all more
readily embrace the secularist insights about human dignity, autonomy, rights and
duties. We can even admit, as we have had to with the child sex abuse crisis in the
Church, that the State and civil society can contribute and help the Church espouse its
true mission and values. In the past some of our church leaders have been suspicious
or wary about the language of human rights and legal regimes for protection of same.
Here in Australia, we religious people know that there are many of our fellow citizens
who have not “given up on the attempt to extirpate religious belief” and that there is a
prevalent view that only the stupid or perverted who could embrace religious faith or
commitment to a church. It’s in this context that we come to consider the issue of
human rights, the national interest and the will of the people.
In the legal academy there continues to be a great evangelical fervour for bills of
rights. This fervour manifests itself in florid espousals of the virtues of weak
statutory bills of rights together with the assurance that one need not be afraid because
such bills do not really change anything. Those of us with a pragmatic, evidentiary
approach to the question are well positioned given that two of Australia’s nine
jurisdictions (Victoria and the ACT) have enacted such bills of rights with the double
assurance that nothing has really changed and that things can now only get better. It
will be interesting to hear an assessment in the longer term of the benefits of a bill of
rights which provides lawyers and judges with greater access to the realm of policy
and service delivery.
Having chaired the National Human Rights Consultation in 2009, I am convinced that
Australia’s exceptionalism in failing to legislate comprehensively for the protection of
human rights will put increasing pressure on the relationship between the three
branches of government. Responding to that pressure, our courts are now isolated
from courts elsewhere, including those in the United Kingdom which are constrained
and directed by Strasbourg and their own Human Rights Act. In the UK, the Tories
long concerned about the influence of Strasbourg are no longer suggesting the repeal
of their Human Rights Act but the passage of a new Bill of Rights which will include
the principles of the European Convention on Human Rights. Our courts are less able
to profit from the cross-fertilisation of ideas from other equivalent jurisdictions such
as the UK, New Zealand, Canada and the USA.
Whether or not we have a bill of rights, much of our human rights jurisprudence
remains partial, failing to extend rights equally to all. Once we investigate much of
the contemporary discussion about human rights, we find that often the intended
recipients of rights do not include all human beings but only those with certain
capacities or those who share sufficient common attributes with the decision makers.
It is always at the edges that there is real work for human rights discourse to do.
Speaking at the London School of Economics on “Religious Faith and Human
Rights”, Rowan Williams when the Archbishop of Canterbury boldly and correctly
asserted:1
The question of foundations for the discourse of non-negotiable rights is not one that lends itself to
simple resolution in secular terms; so it is not at all odd if diverse ways of framing this question in
religious terms flourish so persistently. The uncomfortable truth is that a purely secular account of
human rights is always going to be problematic if it attempts to establish a language of rights as a
supreme and non-contestable governing concept in ethics.
No one should pretend that the discourse about universal ethics and inalienable rights
has a firmer foundation than it actually has. Williams concluded his lecture with this
observation:
As in other areas of political or social thinking, theology is one of those elements that continues to pose
questions about the legitimacy of what is said and what is done in society, about the foundations of law
itself. The secularist way may not have an answer and may not be convinced that the religious believer
has an answer that can be generally accepted; but our discussion of social and political ethics will be a
great deal poorer if we cannot acknowledge the force of the question.
Once we abandon any religious sense that the human person is created in the image
and likeness of God and that God has commissioned even the powerful to act justly,
love tenderly and walk humbly, it may be very difficult to maintain a human rights
commitment to the weakest and most vulnerable in society. It may come down to the
vote, moral sentiment or tribal affiliations. And that will not be enough to extend
human rights universally. Think just of the unborn child, the isolated aged person, the
asylum seeker banished to Nauru or Manus Island, or the young offender caught in
the web of mandatory sentencing laws. In the name of utility, society might not feel
so impeded, limiting social inclusion to those like us, “us” being the decision makers
who determine which common characteristics render embodied persons eligible for
human rights protection. Nicholas Wolterstorff says, “Our moral subculture of rights
is as frail as it is remarkable. If the secularisation thesis proves true, we must expect
that that subculture will have been a brief shining episode in the odyssey of human
beings on earth.”2
Marking the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the late Irish
poet Seamus Heaney said:
Since it was framed, the Declaration has succeeded in creating an international moral consensus. It
is always there as a means of highlighting abuse if not always as a remedy: it exists instead in the
moral imagination as an equivalent of the gold standard in the monetary system. The articulation of its
tenets has made them into world currency of a negotiable sort. Even if its Articles are ignored or
flouted—in many cases by governments who have signed up to them—it provides a worldwide
amplification system for the ‘still, small voice’.
1
2
Rowan Williams, Religious Faith and Human Rights, London School of Economics, 1 May 2008
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs Princeton University Press, 2008, p. 393
The concept of human rights has real work to do whenever those with power
justify their solutions to social ills or political conflicts only on the basis of majority
support or by claiming the solutions will lead to an improved situation for the
mainstream majority. Even if a particular solution is popular or maximises gains for
the greatest number of people, it might still be wrong and objectionable. There is a
need to have regard to the wellbeing of all members of the community.
The late Professor Louis Henkin, arguably the US’s most outstanding international
human rights lawyer of the twentieth century, neatly summarised the varying
perspectives on the origin and basis of human rights, espousing the centrality of the
idea in any society committed to freedom, justice and peace for all:
Although there is no agreement between the secular and the theological, or between traditional
and modern perspectives on human beings and on the universe, there is now a working consensus
that every man and woman, between birth and death, counts, and has a claim to an irreducible core
of integrity and dignity. In that consensus, in the world we have and are shaping, the idea of human
rights is an essential idea.
“Human rights” is the contemporary language for embracing, and the modern means
of achieving, respect and dignity for all.
At his swearing in to the High Court last year, Justice Patrick Keane took some
comfort that the Australian judiciary were not a social elite as in some other countries,
being drawn from the egalitarian democracy shaped by those Australians of the
Depression and War eras who provided selflessly and generously for the education of
their children. He invoked Martin Luther King who said, “The arc of the moral
universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” With a touch of nationalistic pride,
Keane opined that it bends more sharply in that direction here in this part of the
southern hemisphere because of the egalitarianism of our forebears.
In his address at the London School of Economics, Rowan Williams pointed out that
rights and utility are the two concepts that resonate most readily in the public square
today. But we need concepts to set limits on rights when they interfere with the
common good or the public interest, or dare I say it, public morality – the concepts
used by the UN when first formulating and limiting human rights 66 years ago. These
concepts are no longer in vogue, at least under these titles. We also need concepts to
set limits on utility when it interferes with the dignity of the most vulnerable and the
liberty of the most despised in our community. Addressing the UN General
Assembly to mark the anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights
(UNDHR), Pope Benedict XVI said, “This document was the outcome of a
convergence of different religious and cultural traditions, all of them motivated by the
common desire to place the human person at the heart of institutions, laws and the
workings of society, and to consider the human person essential for the world of
culture, religion and science...(T)he universality, indivisibility and interdependence of
human rights all serve as guarantees safeguarding human dignity.” 3 It would be a
serious mistake to view the UNDHR stipulation and limitation of rights as a western
Judaeo-Christian construct.
Mary Ann Glendon’s A World Made New traces the remarkable contribution to that
document by Eleanor Roosevelt and an international bevy of diplomats and academics
whose backgrounds give the lie to the claim that any listing of human rights is a
Western culturally biased catalogue of capitalist political aspirations. The Frenchman
Rene Cassin, the Chilean Hernan Santa Cruz, the Christian Lebanese Adam Malik
and the Chinese Confucian Peng-chun Chang were great contributors to this truly
international undertaking. They consulted religious and philosophical greats such as
Teilhard de Chardin and Mahatma Gandhi. Even Aldous Huxley made a
contribution. It was the Jesuit palaeontologist Teilhard who counselled that the
drafters should focus on “man in society” rather than man as an individual. 4 The
drafters knew that any catalogue of rights would need to include words of limitation.
Cassin proposed only one limitation on a person’s rights: “The rights of all persons
are limited by the rights of others.” 5 The 1947 Human Rights Commission draft
stayed with Cassin’s one stated limitation on rights: “In the exercise of his rights,
everyone is limited by the rights of others.”6 By the time the draft reached Geneva
for the third meeting of the Human Rights Commission in May 1948, there was a
much broader panoply of limitation on individual rights introduced, taking into
account man’s social character and re-introducing Humphrey’s notion of just
requirements of the state: “In the exercise of his rights every one is limited by the
rights of others and by the just requirements of the democratic state. The individual
owes duties to society through which he is enabled to develop his spirit, mind and
body in wider freedom.”7 The Commission then reconvened for its last session at
Lake Success in June 1948. They approved the draft declaration 12-0.
Glendon notes: “Pavlov, the Ukraine’s Klekovkin, and Byelorussia’s Stepanenko, in
line with instructions issued before the meeting had begun, abstained and filed a
minority report.”8 The Commission moved the words of limitation to the end of the
draft and married the limitation to a statement about duties. Article 27 (which
ultimately became Article 29) provided:
Everyone has duties to the community which enables him freely to develop his personality.
3
Benedict XVI, Meeting with the Members of the General Assembly of the United Nations Organisation, 18 April
2008
4 M A Glendon, A World Made New, Random House, 2001, p. 76
5 Article 4, Cassin draft at M A Glendon, op. cit. p. 276
6 Article 4, Human Rights Commission Draft, June 1947, at M A Glendon, op. cit. p.281
7
Article 4, Geneva Draft, at M A Glendon, op. cit. p. 289
8 M A Glendon, op. cit. p. 120
In the exercise of his rights, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are necessary to
secure due recognition and respect for the rights of others and the requirements of morality, public
order and general welfare in a democratic society.
So here in the heart of the modern world’s most espoused declaration of human rights
came an acknowledgment that we all have duties and not just rights, duties to the
community which, perhaps counter-intuitively, enable us to develop our personalities.
I doubt that phrase was coined by Eleanor Roosevelt. At the Commission, it was said
that “morality” and “public order” were “particularly necessary for the French text,
since in English, ‘general welfare’ included both morality and public order”. 9 At one
stage it was suggested that the term “public order” was too broad, permitting the
grossest breach of human rights by those committing arbitrary acts and crimes in the
name of maintaining public order. The commission considered the substitution of
“security for all” for “public order”, similar to the 28th article of the American
Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, but decided to stay with the more
jurisprudentially certain European term “public order”. 10 But also we have the
acknowledgment that individual rights might be limited not just for the preservation
of public order and for the general welfare of persons in a democratic society, but also
for morality – presumably to maintain, support, enhance or develop morality in a
democratic society. Sixty years later, these words of limitation might not sit with us
so readily.
The draft then went from the Human Rights Commission to the Third Committee of
the UN General Assembly. The Committee convened more than 80 meetings to
debate the declaration which it renamed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
rather than International Declaration of Human Rights. The limitation clause was
considered during three of those meetings. The limitation clause was further amended
so that the final Article 29 now reads:
Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is
possible.
In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are
determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and
freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general
welfare in a democratic society.
These rights and freedoms can in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the
United Nations.
Though there was much discussion of amendments to omit references to “morality”
and “public order”, the Third Committee decided to retain these terms as to delete the
mention of them “would be to base all limitations of the rights granted in the
declaration on the requirements of general welfare in a democratic society and
Erica-Irene A Daes, The Individual’s Duties to the Community and the Limitations on Human Rights and
Freedoms Under Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/432/Rev.2,
1983, p. 72
10 Ibid.
9
consequently to make them subject to the interpretation of the concept of democracy,
on which there was the widest possible divergence of views.”11 As amended, this
article was carried by 41 votes to none, with one abstention.12 The General Assembly
then voted to adopt the universal declaration with 48 in favour, 8 abstentions and none
opposed.
I am constantly bemused here in Australia that whenever I agitate questions of
Aboriginal and refugee rights I will usually be well received in small “l” liberal
circles but the very same receptionists are likely to question my clerical entitlement to
speak when I decide to buy into debates on issues like euthanasia and embryonic stem
cell research. And if I buy into topics like same sex marriage, I will be attacked with
equal intensity from both sides – one questioning my right to express a view and the
other contesting my standing as a Catholic priest.
Professor Finnis, a Catholic but making a point equally applicable to all faith
communities, says, “Outside the Church, it is widely assumed and asserted that any
proposition which the Catholic Church in fact proposes for acceptance is, by virtue of
that fact, a ‘religious’ (not a philosophical, scientific, or rationally grounded and
compelling proposition), and is a proposition which Catholics hold only as a matter of
faith and therefore cannot be authentically willing to defend as a matter of natural
reason.”13 For Finnis, much of what John Rawls in his Political Liberalism describes
as public reason can be equated with natural reason. Whereas Rawls would rely only
on an overlapping consensus not wanting to press for objective reality of right and
wrong, Finnis would contest that the only content of an overlapping consensus would
be that which can be objectively known through natural reason.
Enough of the theory for one night. Let’s consider one practical, pressing issue of
human rights, the national interest and the will of the people.
People have been asking me my views on the present debate about Senator George
Brandis’s “right to be a bigot” and the proposed amendments to the Racial
Discrimination Act. Even if one were to concede (as I do) the liberty, licence or
freedom to be a bigot in a pluralistic, democratic society, there is good reason not to
recognise a right to be a bigot, thereby creating the duty on others to accord the right.
There is a right to free speech. That right might be abused and it often is. One abuse
of the right is the making of bigoted or hateful remarks. The making of such remarks
is not the exercise of a right; it is merely the exercise of a liberty. I do not have the
duty to allow the bigot to speak his mind in the public square. I have the liberty to
drown him out. I have the duty to allow the free speech of someone who is not
speaking in a defamatory, bigoted or hateful way and who is not interfering with the
rights of others.
11
Ibid., 74-5
Ibid., p. 75
13 J. Finnis, op. cit., pp. 114-5
12
Back in 1994 when there was discussion at a federal and state level about the
introduction of racial vilification and racial hatred laws, I said I was pessimistic about
the utility of such laws with or without criminal sanctions and with or without
conciliation. I was mainly focused on ensuring that any conduct defined as unlawful
in this realm not be rendered criminal behaviour as many were seeking. Thankfully
the parliament did not go down that track. Section 18C as enacted in 1995 contains a
note stating: “Subsection (1) makes certain acts unlawful. Section 46P of the
Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 allows people to make complaints to
the Australian Human Rights Commission about unlawful acts. However, an unlawful
act is not necessarily a criminal offence. Section 26 says that this Act does not make it
an offence to do an act that is unlawful because of this Part, unless Part IV expressly
says that the act is an offence.” This is what I wrote in Eureka Street in August 1994,
a year before the Commonwealth Parliament enacted the present section 18C of the
Racial Discrimination Act which is now being discussed. Though it mainly argues
against criminal sanctions, I also raised general concerns about any racial hatred law
being applied equally to all:
“Debates in Australia about law and morality are usually caused by calls for the
decriminalization of conduct that is no longer thought to be publicly harmful, or on
which there is no longer a community consensus about the immorality of the conduct.
Whether it be abortion or homosexual activity between consenting adults, there is
room for disagreement not only about the morality of the conduct but also about the
purposes and limits of the criminal law.
“Rarely have we debated the need for the creation of new criminal offences. Our
federal politicians are considering the desirability of making racist violence and racial
vilification criminal offences punishable by substantial prison terms.
“Acts of violence are already punishable. The argument is that the law ought now to
be more severe and specific in its treatment of attackers who choose their victim on
the grounds of race. Irene Moss, as Race Discrimination Commissioner of the Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, reported that racist violence was on the
increase and that greater legal sanctions were needed to stem the tide.
“Violent physical attacks on persons are already criminal acts. A judge or magistrate
sentencing an offender is already entitled to take the attacker's motivation into
account in considering sentence. While being repelled by racist violence, the judge
may be equally repelled by sexist violence, religious violence, or what we will now
have to call person-specific violence.
“When introducing the Commonwealth bill to outlaw racist violence in December
1992, the Federal Minister, Peter Duncan, said in his second-reading speech, 'For
instance, if an Anglo- Saxon woman who has converted to Islam is more likely to be
attacked wearing the hijab, or Muslim women's headscarf, she is attacked not because
the attacker believes she is a Muslim but because the attacker thinks she is an Arab
woman.' Really? One might ask 'Why?' The attacker can already be convicted of any
number of offences that include assault as an element. Even the threat of violence is
punishable. Presumably, in future if the jury could be convinced beyond reasonable
doubt that the attacker had been motivated by a mistaken belief that the victim was
Arab, the court would have to consider the offence more serious than if the attacker
had merely been motivated by a belief that the woman was a Muslim, or by the
certainty that she was his estranged wife or long time enemy, or simply because she
was an innocent bystander on whom he decided to vent his nonracial specific
aggression. In creating a special-category offence of racist violence, the Parliament
presumably wants to punish the attacker not only for the harm done to the victim but
also for the fear instilled in others of the same race. I doubt the practicality of the
distinction, unless one sort of violence is to be judged more ideologically unsound
than another, since it is more likely to reported sensationally by the media.
“Criminal sanctions for racial vilification are even more questionable. Incitement to
racial hatred and hostility, or hate speech as it is sometimes called, is conduct by an
offender or a group that is likely to cause a second person or group to act in an
adverse manner towards a third person or group on the grounds of their race, causing
that third person or group to fear that violence may be used against them because of
their race. Each element—cause, likelihood and grounds—would have to be proved
beyond reasonable doubt in order to secure a conviction. Advocates of such laws
concede that there is little prospect of successful prosecutions—there have only been
one or two in Canada, for example—and argue instead for the symbolic value of the
law.
“Elliot Johnson QC, of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody,
advocated legislative prohibition of racial vilification but expressed strong
reservations about its being made a criminal offence. He concluded: 'In this area
conciliation and education are likely to be more effective than the making of martyrs:
particularly when it is words, not acts, which are in issue.' This approach has also
been adopted by the Gibbs Committee on the Reform of Australian Criminal Law,
and by the majority of the Australian Law Reform Commission in their report,
Multiculturalism and the Law.
“Such a law may fulfill a useful purpose in a society that habitually persecutes
members of one ethnic minority. But in Australia, most vilification is exchanged
between members of warring minorities whose relatives are at each other's throats
back in the home country. It would be a brave Director of Public Prosecutions who
decided to prosecute the Greek agitator and not the Macedonian organiser. It would
be an unenviable task for the police officer, having to decide whether to arrest and
charge the Croat or the Serb. Presumably the advocates of this law would espouse a
selective prosecution procedure under which one would leave warring minorities to
themselves while making a show trial of the mainstream community member who had
singled out one racial group.
“Such a law could be invoked not only by members of the persecuted minority, but
also against them. Or would a selective prosecution policy preclude that, too? Take,
for example, the 1993 sometimes vitriolic Mabo debate. For every elected politician
who said that Aborigines had not evolved to the stage of developing the wheeled cart,
there was an Aboriginal leader fulminating that white public servants were using
word processors as the modern-day equivalent of strychnine to exterminate his
people. For every mining magnate who claimed that Aborigines were stone-age
people with uncivilised ways, there was an Aboriginal leader alleging that white
members of the Liberal Party were like members of the Ku Klux Klan crusading for
blood. In such an atmosphere, even threats of criminal prosecution would have been
counter-productive as they are now when people of goodwill are wrestling with the
political fallout of Pauline Hanson's unwillingness fairly to represent Aborigines and
Asians in her electorate.
“The criminal law is a very blunt instrument for reshaping the hearts of racists and
clearing the air of racist sentiment. Such interference with civil liberty does nothing to
enhance further the human rights of the woman wearing the hijab. It does not help in
the resolution of interethnic conflict. It does nothing to produce more reasoned public
discussion about migration or Aboriginal rights, which are the two key issues relating
to race and which play upon the public's racial fears. It will bring the criminal law and
its governors into disrepute, if the criminal sanctions are ever invoked.
“At this time, in this part of the world, thought-police armed with criminal sanctions
are not the answer.”
Senator Brandis has circulated a proposal to amend the existing provisions prohibiting
offensive behaviour based on racial hatred. I continue to wonder whether such laws
can be applied equally to all. But if it be made unlawful to intimidate a person or
group of persons because of their race, the court assessment of whether the offending
conduct is reasonably likely to have that effect could only be made by the judge
putting herself in the shoes of a member of that race and asking, “In the situation of
this racial group, am I reasonably likely to feel intimidated by these statements or
actions?” It is ludicrous to suggest, as does the government draft, that the reasonable
likelihood of intimidation “be determined by the standards of an ordinary member of
the Australian community, not by the standards of any particular group within the
Australian community”. It is not a matter of standards but of apprehensions of fear.
Such fear is not endured by all Australians, but by racially targeted groups.
It is also ludicrous to stipulate that the law would not apply to words used “in the
course of participating in the public discussion of any political, social cultural,
religious, artistic, academic or scientific matter”. With this overbroad exemption, the
law would never apply to the most published, public, racially vilifying or intimidating
remarks, the very remarks that should be covered unless they are made reasonably
and in good faith in the course of genuine public discussion - as the law presently
requires. Parliament has three options: abolish the prohibition of offensive behaviour
based on racial hatred, leave the existing law untouched, or ask Senator Brandis to go
back to the drawing board. What he has produced is neither fish nor fowl. It’s the
racial hatred law you have when you don’t want a racial hatred law.
To end where I started: Larry Siedentop claims that moral beliefs matter because over
two millennia they have impacted on social relations giving a clear overall direction
to Western history in which the individual becomes “the organizing social role in the
West – that is, how the ‘civil society’ which we take for granted emerged, with its
characteristic distinction between public and private spheres and its emphasis on the
role of conscience and choice. It is a story about the slow, uneven and difficult steps
which have led to individual moral agency being publicly acknowledged and
protected, with equality before the law and enforceable ‘basic’ rights.” Let’s remain
attentive to equality for all before the law and to the enforcement of basic rights,
leaving room for individual conscience and choice even when we think little of the
substance of others’ conscientious choices, let alone their brazen exercise of licence.
This is an extract from Frank Brennan’s Blackfriars Lecture "Human Rights, the
national interest and the will of the people" delivered last night at Australian Catholic
University.