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The author advances the thesis that if there are any moral rights at all, it follows that there is at least one natural right, the equal right of all men to be free. By saying that there is this right, he means that in the absence of certain special conditions which are consistent with the right being an equal right, any adult human being capable of choice (1) has the right to forbearance on the part of all others from the use of coercion or restraint against him save to hinder coercion or restraint and (2) is at liberty to do (i.e., is under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons.

Between Justice and Politics is a history of the first fifty years of the Ligue des droits de l'Homme—the League of the Rights of Man. This is the first book-length study of the Ligue in any language, and it is informed by the recently available archives of the organization. Founded during the Dreyfus Affair, the Ligue took as its mandate the defense of human rights in all their forms. The central argument of this book—and the point on which it differs from all other writings on the subject—is that the Ligue often failed to live up to its mandate because of its simultaneous commitment to left-wing politics. By the late 1930s the Ligue was in disarray, and by the 1940s a number of its members opted to defend the Vichy regime of Marshal Petain.

First published in 2002. This is Volume XI of twelve in the Library of Philosophy series on Ethics. This study is the author's criticism of some political and ethical conceptions outlined on Natural Rights and was written in 1894.

the mass violence of the twentieth century’s two world wars—followed more recently by decentralized and privatized warfare, manifested in terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and other localized forms of killing—has led to a heightened awareness of human beings’ vulnerability and the precarious nature of the institutions they create to protect themselves from violence and exploitation. This vulnerability, something humans share amid the diversity of cultural beliefs and values that mark their differences, provides solid ground on which to construct a framework of human rights. Bryan Turner undertakes this task here, developing a sociology of rights from a sociology of the human body. His blending of empirical research with normative analysis constitutes an important step forward for the discipline of sociology. Like anthropology, sociology has traditionally eschewed the study of justice as beyond the limits of a discipline that pays homage to cultural relativism and the “value neutrality” of positivistic science. Turner’s expanded approach accordingly involves a truly interdisciplinary dialogue with the literature of economics, law, medicine, philosophy, political science, and religion.