E-Mich - The relevance of basic needs for law and justice: a law detached from basic needs is an impoverished law

CHAIRE HOOVER Louvain-La-Neuve

28 septembre 2021

12h45 - 14h00

Mardi intime de la Chaire Hoover par Silvina RIBOTTA (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)

Needs (the theory of needs) have minimal prominence in justice and modern law theories, especially in the foundation of rights. This invisibility has diverse effects on justice and rights, deepening inequality and social injustice. Among them, it reproduces a hierarchical scheme of rights detached from basic needs, including social rights, those most closely linked to the most urgent material needs. These are relegated to a subordinate place in the face of individual, civil and political rights, and it is not perceived that their curtailment and ineffectiveness damages the democratic nucleus of modern states of law, underestimating the interdependence that individual, civil and political rights have regarding them. Needs claim a central place in theories of justice, linked to equality and freedom, and must function as a foundation of rights. Or at least as good reasons for the justification of rights. It is, therefore, necessary to return, without prejudice, to take the theory of needs seriously, to show the tension that exists between needs, poverty, and rights, to discuss the concept of needs (from which we can challenge the law), to be able to propose a classification of needs (to question the hierarchies of law) and argue about how needs can function as reasons to justify rights.