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LAW, RELIGION, AND HUMAN RIGHTS: SKEPTICAL RESPONSES IN THE EARLY TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

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Twilight of Human Rights Law. By Eric A.Posner. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. 200. $23.95 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0199313440.
Christian Human Rights. By SamuelMoyn. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Pp. 264. $24.95 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0812248180.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2017

David Little
David Little*
Affiliation:
T.J. Dermot Dunphy Retired Professor of the Practice in Religion, Ethnicity, and International Conflict, Harvard Divinity School
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Extract

Disputes over the nature, basis, and enforceability of human rights go back to early 1947, when the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) first began. Nor were the disputes limited to the drafting process. Intense arguments emerged among social scientists, philosophers, religious leaders, legal thinkers, and public figures around the world over the very idea of human rights, namely, the notion that human beings possess legally enforceable entitlements to certain protections and opportunities simply because of their common humanity.

Keywords

human rights documentsbackgrounddrafting and contenthuman rights and religiondemocracy and anti-authoritarianism
Type
STATE OF THE FIELD ESSAYS
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , November 2016 , pp. 354 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 2017 

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References

1 Philpott, Daniel and Shah, Timothy Samuel, “In Defense of Religious Freedom: New Critics of a Beleaguered Human Right,” Journal of Law and Religion 31, no. 3 (2016) (this issue)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Merriam-Webster Dictionary online, s.v. “authoritarian,” accessed December 13, 2016, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authoritarian.

3 Landman, Todd, Protecting Human Rights: A Comparative Study (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005), 168–69Google Scholar.

4 Landman, Todd, Human Rights and Democracy: Precarious Triumph of Ideals (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 131–39Google Scholar.

5 Philip Alston (Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights), Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, U.N. Doc. A/70/274 (August 4, 2015).

6 Ibid., 2. For details on World Bank studies, see ibid., 8–9, paras. 23–28.

7 Ibid., para. 59, quoting Easterly, William, The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (New York: Basic Books, 2013)Google Scholar.

8 Moyn, Samuel, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

9 Morsink, Johannes, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In The Last Utopia, Moyn calls Morsink's book “a fine drafting history,” but completely ignores it, and Posner seems unaware of the book. It does not appear on his list of volumes that “played a role in my thinking.”

10 Moyn, The Last Utopia, 51. See Little, David, “Critical Reflections on The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History by Samuel Moyn,” in Essays on Religion and Human Rights: Ground to Stand On (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter 2, for an extensive rehearsal and critique of Moyn's discussion of human rights language.

11 Morsink, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 27, 91, 300.

12 Ibid., chapter 2.

13 G.A. Res. 217 (III)A, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Dec. 10, 1948), preamble.

14 See Little, “Critical Reflections on The Last Utopia,” 72–76; David Little, “Martin Luther King, Jr.: Civil Rights, Human Rights, and Peace” (unpublished lecture).

15 Moyn mistakenly states that the words appear in the preamble (Moyn, 153).

16 Nurser, John S., For All Peoples and All Nations: The Ecumenical Church and Human Rights (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005), 165 Google Scholar (paraphrasing Malik's speech).

17 Morsink, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 263.

18 Beitz, Charles R., “Human Dignity in the Theory of Human Rights: Nothing but a Phrase?,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 41, no. 3 (2013): 259–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Ibid., 297.

20 See Nurser, For All Peoples and All Nations, chapters 2, 8–10.

21 Ibid., 99.

22 Ibid., 171n27.

23 “Extracts from the Minutes of the First Full Meeting of the Joint Committee on Religious Liberty, May 6, 1942,” in ibid., appendix C, 190.

24 Adrian, Melanie, Religious Freedom at Risk: The EU, French Schools, and Why the Veil Was Banned (New York: Springer, 2015)Google Scholar.

25 Paxton, Robert O., The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 217 Google Scholar.

26 Asad, Talal, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, and Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

27 Philpott and Shah, “In Defense of Religious Freedom.”

28 Little, Essays on Religion and Human Rights, 99.

29 U.N. Human Rights Committee, CCPR General Comment No. 22: Article 18 (Freedom of Thought, Conscience or Religion) CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.4 (July 30, 1993), in Religion and Human Rights: Basic Documents, ed. Stahnke, Tad and Martin, Paul (New York: Center for the Study of Human Rights, 1998), 92 Google Scholar.

30 Morsink, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 272.

31 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights art. 27, Dec. 19, 1966, 999 U.N.T.S. 172.

32 See, for example, John Weeks, “A Rising Authoritarian Wave,” openDemocracy.net, February 3, 2014, https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/john-weeks/rising-authoritarian-wave; Odugbemi, Sina, “Authoritarianism Goes Global,” People, Spaces, Deliberation (blog) (Washington, DC: The World Bank, August 6, 2015)Google Scholar, http://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/authoritarianism-goes-global; Manu Bhagavan, “We Are Witnessing The Rise of Global Authoritarianism on A Chilling Scale,” Quartz, March 21, 2016; Pippa Norris, “It's Not Just Trump. Authoritarian Populism Is Rising across the West. Here's Why,” Washington Post, March 11, 2016; Cooley, Alexander, “Authoritarianism Goes Global,” Journal of Democracy 26, no. 3 (2015): 49–63 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Diamond, Larry, Plattner, Mark F., and Walker, Christopher, eds., Authoritarianism Goes Global: The Challenge to Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016)Google Scholar.