Human Rights: The Hard Questions

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. A burgeoning human rights movement followed, yielding many treaties and new international institutions and shaping the constitutions and laws of many states. Yet human rights continue to be contested politically and legally and there is substantial philosophical and theoretical debate over their foundations and implications. In this volume distinguished philosophers, political scientists, international lawyers, environmentalists and anthropologists discuss some of the most difficult questions of human rights theory and practice: What do human rights require of the global economy? Does it make sense to secure them by force? What do they require in jus post bello contexts of transitional justice? Is global climate change a human rights issue? Is there a human right to democracy? Does the human rights movement constitute moral progress? For students of political philosophy, human rights, peace studies, and international relations.

Cindy Holder is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Victoria. She has published articles on minority rights and the human rights of groups.

David A. Reidy is Professor of Philosophy at the University ofTennessee. He is theauthor of many articles and chapters in politicalphilosophy and thephilosophy of law and on Rawls in particular. He isthe author of On the Philosophy of Law (2006), and the co-editor, with Tim Sellars, of Universal Human Rights: Moral Order in a Divided World (2006) and, with Jon Mandle, of The Blackwell Companion to Rawls (2013) and The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon (2014).