The Logic of Constitutional Rights

by Eric Heinze

Individual rights raise endless conflicts and spawn intricate standards and policies. Increasing involvement by courts has added still greater complexity. It would seem that few meaningful principles can unite an area of law plagued by such uncertainty. In this book the author argues that a fixed structure underlies that complexity, determining the kinds of arguments that can be made about individual rights. Examples are drawn from the world's oldest and most intricate body of law on civil rights and the case law of the United States Supreme Court. Yet the model is designed to account for any legal system that recognizes civil rights and liberties. The author applies techniques of logical analysis (although no prior knowledge of logic is required) to identify a deeper discursive structure. He shows how simple concepts of harm and consent, which do not ordinarily appear to be relevant in all cases, provide unity within and across regimes of individual rights.

122 pages, Hardcover

First published May 30, 2005

About the author

After completing studies in Paris, Berlin, Boston, and Leiden, Eric worked with the International Commission of Jurists and UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights, in Geneva, and on private litigation before the United Nations Administrative Tribunal in New York. He conducts lectures and interviews internationally in English, French, German, and Dutch, and is a member of the Bars of New York and Massachusetts, and has also advised NGOs on human rights, including Liberty, Amnesty International and the Media Diversity Institute.

From 2016 – 2019 Eric served as Project Leader for the four nation EU (HERA) consortium Memory Laws in European and Comparative Perspective (MELA), and in 2022 he served as General Rapporteur on the Criminalisation of Hate Speech for the 21st General Congress of the Académie Internationale de Droit Comparé, held in Asunción, Paraguay.

His prior awards and fellowships have included a Fulbright Fellowship, a French Government (Chateaubriand) Fellowship, a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) fellowship, a Nuffield Foundation Grant, an Obermann Fellowship (Center for Advanced Studies, University of Iowa), and several Harvard University Fellowships, including a Sheldon grant, an Andres Public Interest grant, and a C. Clyde Ferguson Human Rights Fellowship.

Heinze founded and directs Queen Mary’s Centre for Law, Democracy, and Society (CLDS). His opinion pieces have appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Independent, Times Higher Education, Aeon, The Raw Story, openDemocracy, Speakers’ Corner Trust, Quillette, The Conversation, Left Foot Forward, Eurozine, and other publications, and he has done television, radio and press interviews for media in Denmark, Brazil, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, the UK and the US. He serves on the Advisory Board of Social Theory and Practice, the International Journal of Human Rights, the University of Bologna Law Review and the British Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Rivista Italiana di Filosofia Politica (journal of the Italian Society of Political Philosophy) and Heliopolis: Culture Civiltà Politica.

Heinze’s most recent book, The Most Human Right: Why Free Speech is Everything (2022, The MIT Press) has been nominated for ‘The Next Big Idea’, Season 18 (non-fiction published from February – July 2022). It has been reviewed in Joe Humphreys’ Unthinkable series in the Irish Times and in several other publications and in 2023 the Chinese translation was published in Taipei by Motifpress. Several of Heinze's other books have also been translated internationally.

Heinze’s articles have appeared in Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Harvard Human Rights Journal, International Theory, Modern Law Review, International Journal of Human Rights, The Journal of Comparative Law, Constitutional Commentary, the International Journal of Law in Context, Ratio Juris, Legal Studies, the Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence, Michigan Journal of International Law, National Black Law Journal, Journal of Social & Legal Studies, Law & Critique, and several other journals. He has also contributed chapters to such collections as Oxford Handbook of Law and Humanities (Oxford University Press, 2020); Extreme Speech and Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2009); Religious Pluralism and Human Rights (Intersentia, 2006) and Minority and Group Rights Toward the New Millennium (Nijhoff, 1999).