Constellation of Rights

Constellation of Rights

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Words Are Violence’s First Step

Words Are Violence’s First Step

The Free Speech Union’s latest blog insists that “words are not violence, but violence is.” On the surface, it sounds neat, even clever: speech is harmless, only actions matter. But scratch that veneer and you see the rot. It’s one of the most disingenuous lines anyone could write.

Biopolitics and Belonging: Foucault in the Age of Human Rights

Biopolitics and Belonging: Foucault in the Age of Human Rights

The Broadest Horizon of Power Power does not only punish. It does not only discipline. As Michel Foucault argued in the final stage of his work, modern power governs life itself. It counts births, manages health, regulates reproduction, categorises sexuality, and seeks to optimise populations. It no longer stops at

The Death of the Marketplace: Reimagining Free Speech as a Discursive Ecosystem

The Death of the Marketplace: Reimagining Free Speech as a Discursive Ecosystem

The Algorithm That Changed Everything In 2018, a YouTube software engineer named Guillaume Chaslot revealed something extraordinary. The platform's recommendation algorithm, which he'd helped build, wasn't just showing people what they wanted to see. It was actively radicalising them for profit. His research showed

From Panopticon to Platform: Foucault on Surveillance and Privacy: Essay 2 of 3

From Panopticon to Platform: Foucault on Surveillance and Privacy: Essay 2 of 3

The Old Prison and the New Platform In 1791, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed a prison he called the Panopticon. Its structure was simple: a central watchtower surrounded by cells. Prisoners could not know if they were being observed at any given moment, so they behaved as if they

Human Rights Beyond the Courtroom: Foucault on Power and Knowledge - Essay 1 of 3

Human Rights Beyond the Courtroom: Foucault on Power and Knowledge - Essay 1 of 3

Rights are not only shields against repression — they must also confront the truths and categories that shape who belongs. When people imagine human rights, the picture is often cinematic and kafka-inspired: an individual standing before the heavy machinery of the state, shielded only by the rule of law. It is

No Going Back: Beethoven’s Lesson for Human Rights

No Going Back: Beethoven’s Lesson for Human Rights

The same momentum that propels his music must propel justice — onward, always onward. Exposition Few composers give such an overwhelming impression of momentum as Beethoven. His music seems to surge forward with its own inner force, as though time itself is being pulled along by the sheer urgency of his

The Three Quarks of Human Rights

The Three Quarks of Human Rights

Why rights, like matter itself, can't exist in isolation. Physics tells us that quarks can't exist alone — they're always bound together, creating the matter of our universe. Human rights work the same way - all the rights are of equal importance and indivisible, but

The Democrary of Starlight: Why Rights Shine Brightest in the Dark

The Democrary of Starlight: Why Rights Shine Brightest in the Dark

A meditation on luminosity, law, and the liberties we share Picture this: You're standing beneath the Wellington night sky, and suddenly the Southern Cross emerges from behind a cloud. No fanfare, no permission sought — just light, travelling unfathomable distances to reach your retina, asserting its ancient right to

The Suitcase You Cannot Pack: On Identity and the Public Sphere

The Suitcase You Cannot Pack: On Identity and the Public Sphere

Why human rights law protects what we must carry with us Imagine, for a whimsical moment, that you could pack yourself into a suitcase each morning. Your race in the blue compartment, your age in the side pocket, your disability status folded neatly with the winter scarves. "Just travelling

Why professional regulation in health care matters.

Why professional regulation in health care matters.

The therapeutic relationship—not a clinician's unfettered hot takes—is the point of such regulation. Political Wellington suspects every rule or regulation is a plot by clipboard bureaucrats to ruin a good kiwi Southland sausage roll. Fair enough—bad rules deserve repeal. But here's one domain