ABSTRACT
The structured balancing test of Chapter 6 is designed to overcome the challenge from weak incommensurability to the balancing of human rights. It aims to enable comparative judgments on the strength of reasons in support of human rights in conflict, despite the lack of a common metric to adequately express the relationship between those rights. In this, I have argued, the structured balancing test succeeds. But because the test focuses on enabling comparability of human rights, it is ineffectual in the face of strong incommensurability: the ‘sort of incommensurability that can leave us paralysed, not knowing what to choose’.1 By definition, strongly incommensurable rights are incomparable. Thus, where a conflict involves strongly incommensurable rights, the structured balancing test encounters its limits.
