Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice

Several of my human rights courses used this as a textbook. I sold my copy when I completed my coursework, only to purchase it again six month later for a reference guide. Well-organized text!

pretty good book and Kindle for amazon works good in my laptop and android cellphone.

The four stars in this review are more for the organization and clarity of Donnelly's ideas and to a lesser extent for the ideas themselves. It works well as an introduction to the validity of human rights, the vocabulary of practitioners and some of the founding documents, particularly, in this case, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948. The Holocaust, plus the forced relocation of millions and the destruction of the most basic necessities to maintain life during World War II was the impetus for the Declaration (grammatically the upper case D is correct but if Donnelly were reading it aloud you could hear it) and the subsequent treaties that amended and extended it. An important aspect of the UDHR is that all the rights it enumerates and defines are individual and not group rights. The rights of ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities are dealt with as the rights of individuals belonging to the group, not the group itself as a collective entity, since human rights are literally the rights that one has simply because on is a human being. Human rights are equal rights; all people have the same human rights as everyone else. They are inalienable; one cannot stop being human no matter how badly one behaves or how monstrously one is treated. And they are universal in that we consider all members of the species Homo Sapiens as human beings and thus, automatically, holders of human rights. Human rights can be violated, ignored or abrogated and often are with impunity for the violators. Attempting to claim a right--the right of free assembly and association, for example, can lead, in many countries to extra-judicial execution--one can simply disappear or, now that it has become a transitive verb, can be disappeared--El Salvador, Chile under Pinochet, Iraq, the Philippines, the USSR, many others. Regimes that feature summary executions of suspected enemies of the state will almost always fail in most other categories of maintaining or expanding human rights. However, no matter how the concept of individual rights is trampled under the jackboots of fascism those rights still exist and individuals in these unfortunate countries are still fully entitled to them. The right to the presumption of innocence in a free and fair hearing before an independent and impartial judiciary doesn't evaporate in, for example, the People's Republic of China even though those rights may seem to be in permanent abeyance. An important distinction for Donnelly is that human rights are not moral rights--human rights have played what he calls a "vanishingly small part of Western moral theory." He follows John Rawls in identifying them as political rights and is much more specific regarding them than Jurgen Habermas whose political philosophy often complements Rawls but who is in conflict with him as well. Donnelly knows his stuff. He is cited everywhere by everyone, has been consulted by the United Nations and governments throughout the world. “Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice" is a valuable and timely book.

I greatly like it. The book arrives on time and in very good shape. Thank you.

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Do yourself and get the kindle version so it's actually readable. This was a text for school. It was boring. It does give a very thorough overview of the evolution and current state of human rights. Had I not hated the class so much, I might have actually enjoyed this book.

Comprehensible for young members of our family (14- 17). Important work.

Great condition and was easy to buy for my school

This is an excellent core textbook for undergraduate or postgraduate students of human rights. Donnelly writes clearly and lucidly and explains the key concepts very well.

Human rights is historically specific and contingent. Donnelly explains a huge range of human righs issues by addressing interdisciplinary analysis. I really recommend it

Great book

great item as described

Great read!!