Latest blog articles

Nobuki Yamamoto, a Japanese contemporary artist, made an eye-catching work of ‘goldfish swimming in a phone booth’ (‘Work 1’) by December 2000 at the latest. In October 2011, a student organisation called ‘Goldfish Club’ at Kyoto University of Art and Design produced Work 2 and exhibited it for a...

Recently, Chanel Co., Ltd. lost a trade mark infringement case regarding its ‘Double C’ logo in China. The full text of the decision can be visited via here (Google translatable). The case has drawn wide attention and, mostly, negative comments. Does this seemingly-counterintuitive loss indeed, well...

In this entry I want to mention four considerations that suggest that human rights lawyers should be cautious in embracing basic income as a replacement for human rights. These reflections should be seen as merely exploratory. The basic income in full has never been put in practice, and consequently...

To speak of economic justice today is to speak of the basic income. A basic income can be defined as an unconditional cash payment to all persons who form part of a political community. As automation increases, there is fear that labor will be replaced by “robots”. The basic income seems to be a...

Trevor Burrus claims that health care cannot be a fundamental right. He is not alone in saying this, but the way he says it is noteworthy. His article is not original (nor does it claim to be), but it represents an admirably clear retelling of an old story: Positive rights cannot be rights, this is...