Grounded normative theory and moral justification

In Just Responsibility (2018), Brooke Ackerly extends her highly instructive investigation of the normative lessons to be drawn from empirical research involving women activists advocating for the marginalized globally. Earlier work, in particular her 2008 monograph, Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference, highlighted how such activists’ views could inform a conception of human rights which would be meaningfully universal but also take appropriate account of diversity and disagreement. In Just Responsibility, the primary emphasis shifts to implementation: to how the views of women activists can and should inform responses to rights violations, or global structural injustices more broadly construed.