Human Rights as Ethics, Politics and Law

This study offers a critical approach to the connections between the law, politics, and morality as they figure in human rights discourse. It argues that human rights must be understood – ethically, politically, and legally – through the prism of reasonable skepticism towards the legitimacy of contemporary institutions for the protection of human rights. The colonial legacy of human rights, the lack of transparent principles for dealing with conflicting rights, and the counterproductive overemph ...