Rescuing Human Rights: A Radically Moderate Approach
Cambridge University Press, 2/14/2019
EAN 9781108405362, ISBN10: 1108405363
Paperback, 244 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm
Language: English
The development of human rights norms is one of the most significant achievements in international relations and law since 1945, but the continuing influence of human rights is increasingly being questioned by authoritarian governments, nationalists, and pundits. Unfortunately, the proliferation of new rights, linking rights to other issues such as international crimes or the activities of business, and attempting to address every social problem from a human rights perspective risk undermining their credibility. Rescuing Human Rights calls for understanding 'human rights' as international human rights law and maintaining the distinctions between binding legal obligations on governments and broader issues of ethics, politics, and social change. Resolving complex social problems requires more than simplistic appeals to rights, and adopting a 'radically moderate' approach that recognizes both the potential and the limits of international human rights law, offers the best hope of preserving the principle that we all have rights, simply because we are human.
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of abbreviations
1. Introduction
assumptions and principles
2. Crime and (occasional) punishment
3. The importance of government, for better or worse
4. Human rights and … whatever
5. Undermining old rights with new ones
you can't always get what you want
6. Women, sex, and gender
7. The flexibility of human rights norms
universality is not uniformity
8. Human rights hawks
9. The indispensable state? The United States and human rights
10. The way forward
less is more
Index.