Dr Saladin Meckled-Garcia

Associate Professor in Human Rights and Political Philosophy
Room: 2.03, 29/30 Tavistock Square
Tel: 020 7679 4947 
Email: s.meckled-garcia@ucl.ac.uk
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Biography

I obtained my undergraduate degree in Philosophy from King’s College, London, before graduating with a Doctorate in Political Philosophy from UCL. I took up a Special Fellowship in Philosophy at UCL, giving a series of inter-collegiate lectures on the philosophy of the young Marx, before becoming a Junior Research Fellow at Birmingham University, and then a Rubin Senior Research Fellow in Human Rights at the UCL School of Public Policy. I joined the faculty of the Department of Political Science at UCL in 2003 as a Lecturer (now Associate Professor) in Human Rights and Political Philosophy.

I founded the Human Rights programme at the UCL School of Public Policy, having designed and launched the MA in Human Rights in 2003. I am also co-founder and Director of the UCL Institute for Human Rights.

I have been on the editorial board of Imprints: Journal of Egalitarian Theory and Policy, an associate editor for Res Publica, and a referee for a variety of journals (including Political Studies, The Journal of Political Philosophy, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Politics, Philosophy and Economics, The Philosophical Quarterly, Review of International Studies, and The Journal of Applied Philosophy, Moral Theory and Practice).

More recently, I co-founded the first UK-Latin America Political Philosophy Research Network, with colleagues from Argentina and Mexico (and a growing number of scholars from other Latin American countries). This has been made possible by the award of a British Academy International Partnership Grant.

Research

My research focuses on finding the links between adopting different ethical theories and the upshots that this has for what we do in practice. I focus on the ethical fields of human rights, justice, and international justice, and on key concepts in those fields, such as responsibility, duty, rights, complicity, liability, and practical reasons. I am particularly interested in tracing the values that might motivate us to adopt different accounts of those components, and what this means in practice.

Publications

Books

• Meckled-Garcia, S. and Cali, B. (eds.) (2006) The Legalization of Human Rights: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Human Rights and Human Rights Law. Oxford: Routledge.

Journal articles

• Meckled-Garcia, S. and Aitchison Cornish, G. (2021) ‘Against Online Public Shaming: Ethical Problems with Mass Social Media’, Social Theory and Practice, 47(1), pp. 1–31.
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2018) ‘Two (Different) Types of Human Rights Duties’, Law, Ethics, and Philosophy, 6, pp. 92–119.
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2018) ‘Natural Duties of Justice in a World of States’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 35(1), pp. 70–89.
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2016) ‘Two Concepts of Justice, and of Its Scope’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 19(5), pp. 534–554.
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2014) ‘What Comes First, Democracy or Human Rights?’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 17(6), pp. 681–688.
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2013) ‘The Practice Dependence Red Herring and Better Reasons for Restricting the Scope of Justice’, Raisons Politiques (English Language Special Issue).
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2013) ‘Giving Up the Goods: Rethinking the Human Right to Subsistence, Institutional Justice, and Imperfect Duties’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 30(1).
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2014) ‘Does the WTO Violate Human Rights (and Do I Help It)? Beyond the Metaphor of Complicity for Systemic Global Poverty’, Political Studies, 62(2).
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2011) ‘International Law and the Limits of Global Justice’, Review of International Studies, 37(5).
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2009) ‘Do Transnational Economic Effects Violate Human Rights?’, Journal of Ethics and Global Politics.
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2008) ‘On the Very Idea of Cosmopolitan Justice’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 16(3).
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2004) ‘Neo-Positivism about Rights the Problem with “Rights as Enforceable Claims”’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 105, pp. 148–148.
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2004) ‘International Justice, Human Rights and Neutrality’, Res Publica, 10, pp. 153–174.
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2002) ‘International Justice, Human Rights and Security after 11th September’, Imprints, 6(2).
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2002) ‘Why Work Harder? Equality, Social Duty and the Market’, Political Studies, 50(4).
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2001) ‘Toleration and Neutrality: Incompatible Ideals?’, Res Publica, 7, pp. 293–313.

Book chapters

• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2015) ‘Specifying Human Rights’, in R. Cruft, S. M. Liao and M. Renzo (eds.) Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 300–315.
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2013) ‘Is There Really a “Global Human Rights Deficit”? Consequentialist Liability and Cosmopolitan Alternatives’, in G. Brock (ed.) Cosmopolitanism Versus Non-cosmopolitanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 111–128.
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2009) ‘Global Justice and Human Rights’, in D. P. Forsyth (ed.) Oxford Encyclopedia of Human Rights. Open University Press.
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2009) ‘Global Justice and International Law’, in B. Cali (ed.) International Law for International Relations. Open University Press.
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2009) ‘How Not to Think about Human Rights and (Global) Justice’ (in Spanish), in M. G. Leclercq and J. Montero (eds.) Human Rights, Democracy and Deliberation in a Transnational World (Derechos Humanos, Democracia y Deliberacion en un Mundo Transnacional), Buenos Aires: Prometeo.
• Meckled-Garcia S. and Cali, B. (2005) ‘Lost in Translation: The Human Rights Ideal and International Human Rights Law’, in S. Meckled-Garcia and B. Cali (eds.) The Legalization of Human Rights: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Human Rights and Human Rights Law. Oxford: Routledge.
• Meckled-Garcia, S. (2004) ‘Toleration and Neutrality: Saving an Unhappy Marriage?’ (a reply to Peter Jones’ critique of my original paper: ‘Toleration and Neutrality: Incompatible Ideals?’), in D. Castiglione and C. McKinnon (eds.) Toleration, Neutrality and Democracy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Teaching

I teach the Master’s modules: ‘Theoretical Foundations of Human Rights’ (PUBL0018); ‘Normative Methods, Legal Analysis and Research Skills’ (PUBL0057); and ‘The Ethics of Poverty’ (PUBL00513).

I have supervised a number of doctoral students who have gone on to obtain academic positions at leading universities around the globe.

Areas in which I would be interested in supervising doctoral research projects are: human rights theory; rights theory; international justice theory; international legal theory; theories of political responsibility; perfect and imperfect duties in political theory; theories of justice; Dworkin and interpretation; theory/normative methodology; and political neutrality.