Many political scientists are adding the role of expert to their role as university professors. They are consultants for various organizations, committees or commissions, and they express themselves through the media or they participate in meetings or conferences oriented toward problem-solving. There are some disconnected experts and some naive technocrats among them. There are also alleged experts who are openly partisan. Fortunately some political scientists while acting as experts remain true scholars. They limit themselves to highlight the choices to be made rather than trying to impose one of them. Their experiences as experts enrich their teaching, research and writing activities as well as the training of young researchers. Somewhat like the presidents of the Canadian Political Science Association they are not in place for too long. And it is a good thing, too.

The expression “human rights” is used currently to denote two distinct items: one is a guarantee given in positive law; the other is a moral claim purportedly innate to human beings. These two items commonly are conflated, implying that they have a necessary connection. Historically they do not; positive human rights have been defended by those with no concept of innate rights, while believers in extensive innate rights have argued for limited positive rights. The defence of positive rights of the type now found in international treaties would be served by distinguishing it from justifications of the contention that human beings have rights.

Robert Nozick argues that inviolable capitalist property rights are a necessary corollary of the free society. This view is grounded in his commitment to the classical liberal principle of equal liberty. This article tests the internal coherence of Nozick's perspective with reference to the demands set by this principle. It is argued that his laissez-faire proposals cannot satisfy these demands. This prompts a consideration of the type of socio-economic arrangements that could respond to the dilemmas posed by the equal liberty principle, the suggestion being that a participatory democratic framework would promote a response superior to Nozick's.

This article argues that constitutional guarantees for francophones and the laws abridging and expanding those rights have been to date largely irrelevant to the linguistic and political welfare of Franco-Manitobans. Rather than stressing the significance of jurisprudence, the article focusses on demography and behaviour. Franco-Manitobans, as defined by mother tongue, increased in relative numbers after their rights were infringed. Although the pattern might reverse itself in the future, francophones are decreasing now that their rights have been reinstated. Manitoba's behaviour has been influenced by and continues to be consistent with Ontario law and practice, a province not bound by similar constitutional obligations.

This article has two objectives: one is to distinguish and explicate four concepts of solidarity which are found in the writings of Hannah Arendt; the other is to show how Arendt's respect for facts and suspicion of sentiment publicly displayed are justified. The first concept of solidarity is exclusive solidarity. It is limited to those who are suffering from exploitation or oppression. The second conception of solidarity is inclusive: it includes those who suffer but can also accommodate those who make common cause with them. This is the only kind of solidarity that Arendt specifically analyzes. A third concept of solidarity is universal: its proximate constituent parts are the different “peoples” who collectively make up humankind. Finally, there is natural solidarity. This variety of solidarity, the author argues, is conceptually inadequate and confused. In the development and articulation of each of these four concepts, some attention is given to the relative contributions of emotion and cognition in determining one's understanding of solidarity.

This article deals with the conception of the State defended by libertarian author Murray N. Rothbard. An American economist, Rothbard has been for more than three decades the foremost advocate and theoretician of anarcho-capitalism. The purpose of the article is to show that the theses put forward by Rothbard regarding the nature, origin and legitimacy of the State do not square with the methodological prescriptions and the fundamental axioms that he himself upholds as the ultimate judgment criteria of a theory. In fact, neither the definition of human action as end-governed, nor methodological individualism, nor the concept of demonstrated preference can be reconciled with explanations in which conspiration, manipulation and involuntary ignorance play a decisive part.