| Summary: | This article explores the relation between normative and sociological conceptions of ‘human rights’, and their use in defining and analysing state crime. Drawing on the work or Bryan Turner and Georg Simmel, it argues that ‘human rights violations’ should not be understood primarily as infractions of specific legal norms, but rather as violations the fundamental principle of human rights, which is that states must justify their coercive actions in terms which all those affected could accept as free and morally equal subjects. This principle is a basic postulate of post-traditional moral thought, a system of values with which the interpretive social sciences have an implicit affinity.
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