Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights

This book brings together a set of essays on the philosophical foundations of human rights, along with critical replies. It is the first comprehensive survey of the topic, comprising of research essays from academics in the fields of law, philosophy, international relations, social science and economics

Rowan Cruft, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Stirling,S. Matthew Liao, Director of the Bioethics Program and Affiliated Professor of Philosophy, New York University,Massimo Renzo, Associate Professor, University of Warwick

Rowan Cruft is a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Stirling. He has published articles on the nature and justification of rights and duties, focusing on the relationship between rights, respect and individualism. His work aims to reveal the comparative importance of different forms of right including human rights, natural rights, contractual rights, property rights, legal rights.

Massimo Renzo is an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. His main research interests are in the problems of authority, political obligation, international justice and the philosophical foundations of the criminal law. He is co-editor, with R.A. Duff, Lindsay Farmer, Sandra Marshall and Victor Tadros, of the volumes The Constitutions of the Criminal Law (OUP 2010) and The Structures of the Criminal Law (OUP 2011).


S. Matthew Liao is Director of the Bioethics Program and Affiliated Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He is also Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Moral Philosophy. His research interests include ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, moral psychology, and bioethics.