Carnegie Council

Home  >  Resources  >  Transcripts

Public Ethics Radio: Hilary Charlesworth on Bills of Rights

Public Ethics Radio (Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, and Carnegie Council)

Hilary Charlesworth, Christian Barry, Matt Peterson

September 25, 2009

The widespread agreement on the importance of human rights in liberal democracies masks sharp differences between governments' methods of protecting these rights. What does a country gain by enacting a bill of rights? Do countries that lack bills of rights, like Australia, protect human rights as well as those, like the United States and Canada, that have them? Does it make a difference if such rights are written into a foundational government document, as they in the United States, or if they are at least ostensibily on par with all other legislation, as they are in the United Kingdom?

In this episode of Public Ethics Radio, human-rights lawyer Hilary Charlesworth leads us through the challenging questions posed by the institutionalization of human rights.

Download PDF File (PDF, 138.49 K)

Read More: Human Rights, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, United States

Tweet

Transcripts have been edited for grammar and clarity, and are posted with permission from the speakers.