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Human Rights from a Positivistic Lens: A Context-Sensitive yet General Theory

When: Thursday, April 10, 2025, 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Where: Room 313, Third Floor, School of Law, Queen Mary University of London Mile End Road London E1 4NS

QMUL’s Centre for Law, Society, and Democracy and the UK-IVR are delighted to co-host a seminar by Dr Kumie Hattori, a Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo and a Visiting Scholar at Queen Mary University of London. The event will be chaired by Dr Noam Gur (QMUL).

Abstract of seminar paper

The author proposes a general legal theory that coherently explains non-ideal phenomena where human rights are only superficially implemented, following the initial stage of philosophers' works on justifying human rights and driving institutional reforms. A perspective from Japan—a “liberal and non-Western” country—rejects the outdated binary of “Liberal (West) vs. Non-West” and represents a third category, which enables us to analyse the phenomenon in which top-down human rights implementation lacks corresponding bottom-up support. The divergence between human rights norms and their acceptance is notably prevalent in Japan but is also relevant, albeit to a lesser extent, in other liberal countries. By adopting a legal positivistic framework, the author envisions the transitional phases of human rights norms as context-sensitive yet general.

About the speaker

Dr Kumie Hattori is a JSPS Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo whose research focuses on human rights theory, legal normativity, and climate compensatory justice. She is the recipient of several academic awards, including the Young Scholar Prize from the International Association of Legal Philosophy and Social Philosophy in 2022. After completing her Ph.D. at Kyoto University, she has been teaching legal philosophy and law at several universities. Since 2024, she has also been leading a JSPS-funded five-year project, Human Rights and Contemporary Legal Positivism, which focuses on analytical and comparative jurisprudence on rights between East Asia and Europe.

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