03 December 2012

CRDP Part 2

Even if I am correct, as argued here, that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons (CRDP) is neither a threat to the sovereignty of the United States nor a springboard for additional litigation nor a source of additional state responsibilities, it does not follow that the Senate should ratify the Convention. In other words, what good would it do for the U.S. to ratify the CRDP?

Two quick points. First, as I posted here and here over two years ago, the Convention was an instrumental factor in causing the Supreme Court of India to block the forced abortion of the unborn child of a mentally disabled victim of rape. I expect that none of the conservative opponents of ratification of the CRPD would gainsay this positive use of the Convention.

Second--and here matters become more controversial--ratification would increase the influence of the United States with respect to matters relating to the disabled in the rest of the world. "Human rights" is the only vocabulary of morality that approaches world-wide acceptance. Even though there are many who reject the very idea of human rights, and even though there is neither a common justification for the existence of human rights nor a common understanding of what they are (see my Looking for Bedrock piece here), it remains the case that the rubric of human rights is the only game in town. For support for this contention see David Smolin's Overcoming Religious Objections to the Convention of the Rights of the Child, 20 Emory Int'l L. Rev. 81 (2006). Neither natural law nor classical natural rights have sufficient traction outside certain enclaves to ground arguments for what States should do for the disabled and what the State should prevent others from doing to the disabled. I am not arguing that conservative Christians should forgo their particular contributions to debates over rights of the disabled; rather, I'm suggesting that the United States qua the world's military superpower can have more non-military influence inside the human rights system than outside of it.

Others may come to a different conclusion on prudential grounds. After all, they argue, few nations in the world do more for their disabled citizens than the United States. But such a state of affairs will, I believe, have a greater chance of effecting what others do for their citizens if the Senate ratifies the CRDP.

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