The Meaning of Human Rights After 1945

In the second half of the twentieth century human rights have, in spite of reservations, become a globally effective, normative standard of humanity. Although they continue to be disregarded and violated in some states at some times, almost all people and states are prepared to accept human rights as a de facto moral standard, even if this is partly only lip service. What is it though that has made the extraordinary success of human rights possible, in particular as distinct from other norms of morality, the idea of liberal basic rights and democratic politics? By way of reply I will advocate the following hypothesis which I shall present as the outline of a political, pluralistic conception of human rights: human rights constitute moral claims of a particular kind because they are based on a global, minimal and overlapping consensus of different conceptions of morality. Not only with respect to (1.) their content and (2.) their form, do they have a singular status, which may explain their extraordinary career, but also with respect to (3.) their theory of justification and (4.) their positive legal aspect. In section (1.) with respect to their content, I rely on the widely shared observation that human rights protect particularly fundamental aspects of the human being in which he/she is vulnerable. A complex historical learning process is reflected in this minimal core content of the idea of human rights with reference to the relevant understanding of basic human interests. Section (2.) shows that human rights are in a particular way moral-political rights with a certain ‘dialectical’ movement between the two sides - i.e. the moral or the political understanding - in the development of the idea of human rights. Section (3.) tries to show that the de facto acknowledgement of human rights as particular moral rights which are to use effective institutions to protect vital interests, is, based on a global, minimal and overlapping consensus of differing conceptions of morality. The fact that representatives of these various conceptions of morality can agree on (some basic) human rights and have in fact done so, constitutes the immense political advantage of human rights. Beneath the surface of a minimal human rights consensus, various different culturally specific justifications can co-exist without detracting from the cross-cultural validity of human rights norms. In this section I will engage with different ‘ecumenical’ views of human rights critically and try to show why my version is better than the contenders. Finally in (4.) I try to show that at the same time, the increasing enforcement of key human rights constitutes a further important aspect of this political interpretation of human rights. The idea is developing at present that because violations of human rights also constitute violations of the legal responsibility of the state in question against everybody (erga omnes), they may also be enforced by everybody, not just by victims of human rights violations and their fellow citizens from the relevant state.