Human Rights: Fact or Fancy

In his provocative and highly readable study, Human Rights: Fact or Fancy?, Henry B. Veatch finds the basis for human rights in natural law. He builds his argument step by step, carefully laying the foundation for his central assertion that our basic rights are discoverable directly in the facts of nature. Although the bulk of contemporary concern is with the law only and not with ethics, Veatch insists that this approach is mistaken because it leaves no place for what Aristotle called "a natural justice." Law must be based on ethics, he maintains, and ethics in turn must be grounded in fact and therefore must have a basis in nature.