The Age of Rights

Front Cover
Columbia University Press, 1990 - Law - 220 pages
This text explores the principal issues and developments, both in international human rights and in rights in the United States, and then compares the concepts and conditions of rights in various parts of the world. It pays particular attention to the role of US foreign policy.
 

Contents

The Human Rights Idea
1
Rights in the United States
66
Here and There
157
Human Rights and Competing Ideas
181
Notes
195
Index
215
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

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Page 220 - We doubt very much whether any action of a State not directed, by way of discrimination, against the negroes as a class, or on account of their race, will ever be held to come within the purview of this provision.
Page 218 - The government of the Union, then, (whatever may be the influence of this fact on the case,) is, emphatically and truly, a government of the people. In form and in substance it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit.
Page 215 - In particular, an essential distinction should be drawn between the obligations of a State towards the international community as a whole, and those arising vis-a-vis another State in the field of diplomatic protection. By their very nature the former are the concern of all States. In view of the importance of the rights involved, all States can be held to have a legal interest in their protection; they are obligations erga omnes.
Page 216 - To refrain from any act of economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by another participating State of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
Page 218 - Although that preamble indicates the general purposes for which the people ordained and established the Constitution, it has never been regarded as the source of any substantive power conferred on the government of the United States, or on any of its departments.
Page 215 - Such obligations derive, for example, in contemporary international law, from the outlawing of acts of aggression,, and of genocide, as also from the principles and rules concerning the basic rights of the human person, including protection from slavery and racial discrimination...

About the author (1990)

Louis Henkin is University Professor Emeritus and Special Service Professor at Columbia University and is Chairman of the Directorate of the Center for the Study of Human Rights.

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