The Heart of Human Rights

• First in-depth examination of the moral foundations of the international legal human rights system.
• Challenges common assumptions in the philosophical literature about the relationship between moral human rights and international legal human rights.
• Shows that the international legal human rights system is not grounded in excessively individualistic moral assumptions.
• Goes beyond scrutiny of international legal human rights norms to assess the legitimacy of the institutions that create and implement them.
• Critically evaluates tensions between the commitment to constitutional democracy and the commitment to the authority of international human rights law, expanding the agenda for research on cosmopolitan theories of global justice.

This is the first attempt to provide an in-depth moral assessment of the heart of the modern human rights enterprise: the system of international legal human rights. It is international human rights law-not any philosophical theory of moral human rights or any "folk" conception of moral human rights-that serves as the lingua franca of modern human rights practice. Yet contemporary philosophers have had little to say about international legal human rights. They have tended to assume, rather than to argue, that international legal human rights, if morally justified, must mirror or at least help realize moral human rights. But this assumption is mistaken. International legal human rights, like many other legal rights, can be justified by several different types of moral considerations, of which the need to realize a corresponding moral right is only one. 

Further, this volume shows that some of the most important international legal human rights cannot be adequately justified by appeal to corresponding moral human rights. The problem is that the content of these international legal human rights-the full set of correlative duties-is much broader than can be justified by appealing to the morally important interests of any individual. In addition, it is necessary to examine the legitimacy of the institutions that create, interpret, and implement international human rights law and to defend the claim that international human rights law should "trump" the domestic law of even the most admirable constitutional democracies.

Readership: The primary audience will be philosophers and international lawyers. The book should also be of interest to political scientists who specialize in international relations.