Jolyon Ford – författare

For decades, framing an issue as a ‘human rights’ issue carried certain power and effect in politics and international relations, one that has been challenged by the recent rise of populist political forces. Ford explores the recent impact of populist politics on the universalist human rights project, in particular, how scholars have framed and responded to this challenge.

Ford offers a provocation to the human rights movement. Rather than ‘what have populists done to human rights?’, it asks ‘how did we, the human rights movement, do this to ourselves?’ How did fundamental protections for all become so easily scapegoated as ‘us and them,’ as claims of small, often foreign, minorities? Did human rights lose some vital connection to ordinary people’s interests, their value taken as obvious and self-explanatory?

Looking forward, the book asks how – in a post-truth ‘fake news’ world – we might reimagine human rights as underpinning human flourishing as well as important constraints on public and private concentrations of power. Traversing relevant scholarly literature on the future of human rights and zooming out to look at wider patterns of political and diplomatic discourse, this book will speak to policymakers, diplomats, journalists, and human rights advocates – and all interested in the crisis of liberal democracies.

For decades, framing an issue as a ‘human rights’ issue carried certain power and effect in politics and international relations, one that has been challenged by the recent rise of populist political forces. Ford explores the recent impact of populist politics on the universalist human rights project, in particular, how scholars have framed and responded to this challenge.

Ford offers a provocation to the human rights movement. Rather than ‘what have populists done to human rights?’, it asks ‘how did we, the human rights movement, do this to ourselves?’ How did fundamental protections for all become so easily scapegoated as ‘us and them,’ as claims of small, often foreign, minorities? Did human rights lose some vital connection to ordinary people’s interests, their value taken as obvious and self-explanatory?

Looking forward, the book asks how – in a post-truth ‘fake news’ world – we might reimagine human rights as underpinning human flourishing as well as important constraints on public and private concentrations of power. Traversing relevant scholarly literature on the future of human rights and zooming out to look at wider patterns of political and diplomatic discourse, this book will speak to policymakers, diplomats, journalists, and human rights advocates – and all interested in the crisis of liberal democracies.

Taking a multidisciplinary approach, the contributors demonstrate the interplay between various research methods, and policy motivations, to show that law-based regulation and governance of AI is vital to efforts at ensuring justice, trust in administrative and contractual processes, and inclusive social cohesion in our increasingly technologically-driven societies. The book provides valuable insights on the new challenges posed by a rapid reliance on AI and big data, from data protection regimes around sensitive personal data, to blockchain and smart contracts, platform data reuse, IP rights and limitations, and many other crucial concerns for law’s interventions. The book also engages with concerns about the ‘surveillance society’, for example regarding contact tracing technology used during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The analytical approach provided will make this an excellent resource for scholars and educators, legal practitioners (from constitutional law to contract law) and policy makers within regulation and governance. The empirical case studies will also be of great interest to scholars of technology law and public policy. The regulatory community will find this collection offers an influential case for law’s relevance in giving institutional enforceability to ethics and principled design.