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1 in Faith: A Christian Bible Study |
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Notes: Introduction1 Louis Henkin, The Rights of Man Today (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1978), xii.2 To verify the explicit use of human rights language, I quote many persons in this study, some of whom do not use inclusive language. However, at all times by "human rights" I mean the human rights of women and men.3 Abdul Aziz Said, "Preface," in Human Rights and World Order, ed. Said (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1978), xi.4 Rhoda E. Howard and Jack Donnelly, "Introduction," in International Handbook on Human Rights, ed. Donnelly and Howard (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987), 1.5 In Spanish "derechos del hombre" became "derechos humanos." However, the French have continued to use "droits de l'homme" to translate "human rights."6 Walter J. Landry, "The Ideals and Potential of the American Convention on Human Rights," Human Rights 4, no. 3 (Summer 1975):396-97.7 David P. Forsythe, Human Rights and World Politics (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 3.8 There are two tests for customary international law: the principle or rule must reflect the practice of the great majority of states, and the practice must be seen as an obligation rather than a courtesy. "Today it is a common view of international lawyers that the Universal Declaration has attained something of the status of customary international law, so that the rights it contains are in some important sense binding on states." Howard and Donnelly, "Introduction," International Handbook of Human Rights, 7.9 Robert B. McKay, "What Next?" in Human Dignity: The Internationalization of Human Rights, ed. Alice Henkin (New York: Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, 1979), 67.10 Asbjørn Eide, "Dynamics of Human Rights and the Role of the Educator," in Frontiers of Human Rights Education, ed. Eide and Marek Thee (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 105.11 "The Rule of Law and Human Rights—Principles and Definitions," in International Commission of Human Rights (Geneva: 1968), 44. Quoted in Fernando Fournier, "The Inter-American Human Rights System," De Paul Law Review 21, no. 1 (1971):380.12 Louis Henkin, "Rights: American and Human," Columbia Law Review 79, no. 3 (April 1979):405.13 Abba Hillel Silver, "Prophetic Religion and World Culture," in Religious Faith and World Culture, ed. Amandus William Loos (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1951; reprinted 1970), 138.14 Erich Weingärtner, Human Rights on the Ecumenical Agenda: Report and Assessment (Geneva: Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, World Council of Churches, 1983), 11. See Charles E. Curran, "Religious Freedom and Human Rights in the World and the Church: A Christian Perspective," in Religious Liberty and Human Rights in Nations and Religions, ed. Leonard Swidler (Philadelphia: Ecumenical Press, Temple University, 1986), 152-53.15 Tertullian, Liber ad Scapulam, 2; PL. I, col. 699; quoted in Gabriel Daly, "Church, State, and the Ideal of Freedom," in Understanding Human Rights: An Interdisciplinary and Interfaith Study, ed. Alan D. Falconer (Dublin: Irish School of Ecumenics, 1980), 166.16 Daly, "Church, State, and the Ideal of Freedom," 167-68.17 John Langan, "Human Rights in Roman Catholicism," in Human Rights in Religious Traditions, ed. Arlene Swidler (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1982).18 Hersch Lauterpacht, An International Bill of the Rights of Man (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945), 4.19 Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, in Church and State through the Centuries, ed. and trans. Sidney Ehler and John Morrall (London: Burns and Oates, 1954), 284-85. Quoted in John Langan, "Human Rights in Roman Catholicism," in Human Rights in Religious Traditions, 31.20 John Langan, "Human Rights in Roman Catholicism," in Human Rights in Religious Traditions, 32.21 Robert Nelson, "Human Rights in Creation and Redemption: A Protestant View," in Human Rights in Religious Traditions, 1.22 These early liberal movements and their descendants—Free Congregations, Liberal Protestant churches, Brethren churches, Mennonites, Unitarians, and others—carry on this tradition today. Many are represented in the International Association for Religious Freedom, which in 1987 pledged its support for "all who are working toward world understanding and peace, and toward promoting the dignity and rights of human beings everywhere." "1987 IARF World Congress Declaration," IARF World Congress: Proceedings (Frankfurt, Federal Republic of Germany: IARF, 1987), 31.23 Max L. Stackhouse, "Piety, Polity, and Policy," in Religious Beliefs, Human Rights, and the Moral Foundation of Western Democracy, ed. Carl H. Esbeck (Columbia: University of Missouri, 1986), 15. Harlan Cleveland writes: "The kernel of human rights was always there—in the idea that Adam was created in the image of God, and in the practice of a few of the many—the civil disobedience which brought Daniel to the lions' den, the claim of the early Christians that Rome governed by transgressing the dictates of the divine, the resentment of oppression that brought the Puritans to America, all precedents for Martin Luther King who violated American laws as contrary to the laws of God. Only with the Enlightenment comes the idea that every human being has rights that are to be recognized, even protected, but are not conferred, by society." Quoted in Jonathan Power, Against Oblivion: Amnesty International's Fight for Human Rights (Great Britain: Fontana Paperback, 1981), 217.24 Max L. Stackhouse, "Piety, Polity, and Policy," in Religious Beliefs, Human Rights, and the Moral Foundation of Western Democracy, 16.25 Elaine Pagels, "The Roots and Origins of Human Rights," in Human Dignity: The Internationalization of Human Rights, ed. Alice Henkin (New York: Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, 1979), 4.26 Louis Henkin, "Judaism and Human Rights," Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought 25, no. 4 (1976):437.27 Louis Henkin, The Rights of Man Today, 4.28 Stanley S. Harakas, "Human Rights: An Eastern Orthodox Perspective," in Human Rights in Religious Traditions, 14.29 Carl F. H. Henry, "The Judeo-Christian Heritage and Human Rights," in Religious Beliefs, Human Rights, and the Moral Foundation of Western Democracy, 30.30 Ibid.31 Kana Mitra, "Human Rights in Hinduism," in Human Rights and Religious Traditions, 79.32 Hersch Lauterpacht, International Law: Being the Collected Papers of H. Lauterpacht, ed. E. Lauterpacht, vol 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 47.33 Quoted in J. G. Starke, "Human Rights and International Law," in Human Rights, ed. Eugene Kamenka and Alice Erh-Soon Tay (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), 118. The "four freedoms" are freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, and freedom from want.34 Quoted in Egan Schwelb, Human Rights and the International Community: The Roots and Growth of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948-1963 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1964), 25. This book was published for the B'nai B'rith, International Council, Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, and the U.S. Committee for the United Nations.35 Louis Henkin, "Rights: American and Human," Columbia Law Review 79, no. 3 (April 1979):410. Rebecca J. Cook writes: "The origin of modern international law in the natural law tradition shows that the recent growth of human rights law is faithful to the moral principles of international legal humanitarianism which developed through both religiously inspired and secular scholarship." Cook, "Human Rights and Infant Survival: A Case for Priorities," Columbia Human Rights Law Review 18, no. 1 (Fall-Winter 1986-1987):3.36 John Humphrey, "The Revolution in the International Law of Human Rights," Human Rights 4, no. 2 (Spring 1975):209. See also Humphrey, "The International Bill of Rights: Part One," in Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights (Paris: UNESCO, 1986), 59-72. Allessandra Luini de Russo asserts that until 1948 "it was the consensus of opinion among jurists, diplomats and internationalists in general, that the question of fundamental freedoms was to be solved exclusively on the national level." Allessandra Luini de Russo, International Protection of Human Rights (Washington, D.C.: Lerner Law Book Co., 1971), 252. René Cassin, who represented France in the Human Rights Commission that drafted the Universal Declaration, writes: "In the area of human rights, which is linked with the maintenance of peace, we are witnessing a trend towards divesting the State of its traditional exclusive domestic competence." Cassin, "Man and the Modern State," in An Introduction to the Study of Human Rights, ed. Sir Francis Vallat (London: Europa Publications, 1970), 45. And Jerome Shestack, after noting the dismal record in enforcing human rights law, observes that nonetheless human rights are embraced by "the masses of the world" and thus "Human right may well turn out to be the true revolutionary movement of our time." Shestack, "The World Had a Dream," Human Rights 15, no. 2 (Summer 1988):45.37 Egan Schwelb, Human Rights and the International Community, 25.38 James Frederick Green, "NGOs," in Human Rights and World Order, 90. The growing influence of nongovernmental organizations on the development of international human rights law has led to a profusion of organizations. At the UN, over fifty NGO observers are members of the NGO Human Rights Committee. Directories published by Human Rights Internet list over seven hundred organizations in the U.S. and Canada, nearly fourteen hundred in Western Europe, and over six hundred in the Third World. See Lowell W. Livezey, Nongovernmental Organizations and the Ideas of Human Rights (Princeton, N.J.: Center of International Studies, Princeton University, 1988).39 Helle Kanger, Human Rights in the United Nations Declaration (Stockholm, Sweden: Almquist and Wiksell Int., 1984), 14.40 Ibid. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im notes that Egypt supported the amendment to the Dumbarton Oaks proposal to require the UN Charter to include obligations to promote respect for human rights. An-Na'im, "Religious Freedom in Egypt: Under the Shadow of the Islamic Dhimma System," in Religious Liberty and Human Rights in Nations and in Religions, 48.41 N. Robinson, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1958), 102-05.42 Hersch Lauterpacht, An International Bill of the Rights of Man, v. In 1943 Jacques Maritain published a scheme of human rights in The Rights of Man and Natural Law, trans. Doris C. Anson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943), 111-14. This scheme is excerpted as appendix C in Human Rights: Problems, Perspectives and Texts, ed. F. E. Dowrick (England: Saxon House, 1979), 148-49.43 Hersch Lauterpacht, An International Bill of the Rights of Man, 69.44 UN GAOR 933, UN Doc. A/777 (1948). Nations abstaining were Byelorussia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Saudi Arabia, the Ukraine, South Africa, the USSR, and Yugoslavia.45 John P. Humphrey, Human Rights and the United Nations: A Great Adventure (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Transnational Publishers, 1984), 74.46 J. E. S. Fawcett, "Human Rights: The Applicability of International Instruments," in Human Rights: Problems, Perspectives and Texts, 78.47 G. I. A. D. Draper, "Human Rights and the Law of War," Virginia Journal of International Law 12 (1971-72):336. Philip C. Jessup, a former member of the International Court of Justice, argues: "It is already law at least for members of the United Nations, that respect for human dignity and fundamental rights is obligatory. The duty is imposed by the Charter, a treaty to which they are parties." Quoted in Frank C. Newman, "Past Problems and Future Directions," in International Human Rights Law and Practice: The Roles of the United Nations, the Private Sector, the Government, and Their Lawyers, ed. James C. Tuttle (Philadelphia: International Printing Co., 1978), 254.48 United Nations Document A/CN. 4/245, 23 April 1971, 196: Survey of International Law, a working paper prepared by the Secretary-General of the United Nations for the International Law Commission.49 John P. Humphrey, "The Revolution in the International Law of Human Rights," 207. Thomas Buergenthal and Judith V. Torney take the same position in International Human Rights and International Education, 49-50. Richard B. Bilder asserts that however one evaluates the arguments, "the Declaration is frequently invoked as if it were legally binding, both by nations and by private individuals and groups." Bilder, "An Overview of International Human Rights Law," in Guide to International Human Rights Practice, ed. Hurst Hannum (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 11.50 Thirty Years of Human Rights at the United Nations: The Record and the Prospects (New York: Columbia University in the City of New York, 1979), 12. U Thant, as Secretary-General of the UN, later echoed this sentiment. See Schwelb, Human Rights and the International Community, 7.51 Arthur Holcombe, "Human Rights under the United Nations Charter," Law and Contemporary Problems 14, no. 3 (Summer 1949):433. On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the President's Commission for the Observance of the Human Rights Year 1968 published a selection of documents and statements updating a similar publication by the Department of State in 1949 entitled Human Rights, Unfolding of the American Tradition (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, 1968). On the page before the foreword, quotes from the 1776 Declaration of Independence and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights are printed side by side.52 J. H. Burns, "The Rights of Man since the Reformation: An Historical Survey," in An Introduction to the Study of Human Rights, 29.53 Edward Kennedy, "Never Again," Human Rights 13, no. 3 (Summer 1986):32. This article is excerpted from remarks made when Senator Kennedy received an award from the International Human Rights Law Group in Washington, D.C., 13 May 1986.54 Benjamin B. Ferencz, prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, asserts with Ken Keyes, Jr. that "International concern for human rights and welfare is a great historical force of our time." They also proclaim as "the ultimate human right" the right "to live in a peaceful world free from the threat of death by nuclear war," as this right "makes possible all of our other rights and goals." Ferencz and Keyes, PlanetHood: The Key to Your Survival and Prosperity (Coos Bay, Ore.: Vision Books, 1988), 87 and 1-2.55 Myers McDougal and Gertrude Leighton, "The Rights of Man in the World Community: Constitutional Illusions versus Rational Action," Law and Contemporary Problems 14, no. 3 (Summer 1949):490.56 Quoted in Seán MacBride, "The Universal Declaration—Thirty Years After," in Understanding Human Rights, 10.57 Pierre de Senarclens, "Research and Teaching of Human Rights: Introductory Remarks," in Frontiers of Human Rights Education, 9. This language of convergence is criticized for being ambiguous by Timothy Fuller in his "Commentary" on Mark L. Schneider's essay, "Tenets of Official Policy on Human Rights," in Rights and Responsibilities: International, Social, and Individual Dimensions (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 210-11. However, in an essay entitled "A Bedrock Consensus of Human Rights," Thomas W. Wilson, Jr. writes that the issue of human rights "has burst the sacred bounds of national sovereignty." In Human Dignity: The Internationalization of Human Rights, 47. Pierre de Senarclens, "Research and Teaching of Human Rights: Introductory Remarks," in Frontiers of Human Rights Education, 9. This language of convergence is criticized for being ambiguous by Timothy Fuller in his "Commentary" on Mark L. Schneider's essay, "Tenets of Official Policy on Human Rights," in Rights and Responsibilities: International, Social, and Individual Dimensions (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 210-11. However, in an essay entitled "A Bedrock Consensus of Human Rights," Thomas W. Wilson, Jr. writes that the issue of human rights "has burst the sacred bounds of national sovereignty." In Human Dignity: The Internationalization of Human Rights, 47.58 James Nickel, Making Sense of Human Rights: Philosophical Reflections on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), xi. The reasons for the flourishing of human rights are obviously complex. For instance, Amnesty International, which today provides invaluable advocacy in defense of the human rights of prisoners of conscience, was founded by Peter Benenson. Why did he do it? "We know from things he's said that Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King were influences, yet in his own chemistry there was his Jewish background, the bell of the Holocaust still tolling, and his Catholic belief, shaped in part by the peasant Pope, John XXIII, who stripped layers off an ossified, even corrupt church and revealed the freshness of the liberating teaching of Jesus of Nazareth beneath." Jonathan Power, Against Oblivion: Amnesty International's Fight for Human Rights, 218.59 Henkin, The Rights of Man Today, 27-28.60 Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 111. |
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