The Human Right to Participate in Science and the Legal and Institutional Structure of Science

In 1948, Article 27(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declared the right ‘to share in scientific advancement and its benefits’. Since 1966, the right has also been guaranteed by Article 15(1)(b) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) as the right to ‘enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications’. This equivocation on the right’s name reveals a deeper disagreement about the object of that right, i.e. (actively) participating in the scientific practice or (passively) ‘enjoying its fruits’ only. While the importance of participation in science has been re-emphasised in recent interpretations of the right in all its dimensions (including freedom of research, equal access to its benefits and protection against its harmful effects), no justifications thereof have yet been provided based on the normative practice of science. Nor, more importantly, have consequences been drawn regarding the legal and institutional structure of science. Drawing on considerations in human rights theory and the philosophy of science, the conference proposes an interpretation of Article 15(1)(b) ICESCR qua ‘right to participate in scientific practice and enjoy its benefits’. It starts by spelling out the public, participatory and communal dimensions of the good of science and the corresponding dimensions of the human right to participate in science, including the right’s and its related duties’ collective dimensions. It then draws three implications of the proposed participatory interpretation of the right for the legal and institutional framework of science, both domestically and internationally: the democratic constitution of science, the social law of science and the good self-government of science.

Registration – Close at December 18th
We invite you to a mingle after the event.

Speakers include (in order of appearance):

Tora Holmberg, Vice-Rector of Humanities and Social Sciences (opening remarks)

Carl Tham, former Minister of Education (chair)

Keynote: Samantha Besson, Collège de France, Paris, Professor for International Law and Institutions

Linda Wedlin, Uppsala University, Director for research program Democracy and Higher Education

Hans Ellegren, Uppsala University, Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Samantha Besson

Samantha Besson holds the Chair Droit international des institutions at the Collège de France in Paris. She is also a Professor of Public International Law and European Law at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). A dual Swiss/British national, she was educated in Switzerland (Fribourg & Bern), Austria (Vienna), the United Kingdom (Oxford) and the United States (Columbia). She served as a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Zurich, Lausanne and Lisbon and at Duke, Harvard and Pennsylvania University Law Schools, and was a Research Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and at the Institut d’études avancées de Nantes. She also taught in various capacities at the Hague Academy of International Law where she gave a special course in January 2020 and will be teaching the general course in July 2027. In 2021, Samantha Besson was elected associate member of the Institute of International Law and, since 2020, has been co-chair of the International Law Association’s Study Group on the International Law of Regional Organizations. Since 2017, she has been a member of the Swiss Academy of Social and Human Sciences and, between 2013 and 2016, she was the Swiss Academies of Science’s first Delegate for Human Rights. Samantha Besson’s research interests lie at the intersection of general international law, European Union institutional law and political and legal philosophy, with a special focus on human rights law and theory and on democratic theory. Her recent publications include Reconstructing the International Institutional Order, Inaugural Lectures of the Collège de France, OpenEdition Books/Collège de France 2021 and Due Diligence in International Law, Hague Academy of International Law Special Editions, Brill/Nijhoff 2023.