The Normative Function of Human Rights from a Kantian Standpoint

In the contemporary literature on Human Rights, there is an important debate concerning the function of the idea of human rights. Some authors argue that basic human rights are the criterion to assess whether particular political regimes are legitimate or not. On the other hand, some others seem to hold that human rights designates the normative standards that should regulate the relations between human beings in the contexts where no-institutionalized rights and obligations corresponding to them exist. In this paper, I will investigate what insights a Kantian perspective can provide in this regard.