Rudolf Laun and the Human Rights of Germans in Occupied and Early West Germany

Bibliographic Data

ID23199639
AuthorsLora Wildenthal (University of California, Berkeley, corresponding author)
Year2010
Pages125-144
Publication date2010-12-13
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueHuman Rights in the Twentieth Century (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/cbo9780511921667.009
OpenAlexW1539753517
ISBN9780511921667
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited19

What are human rights? The technical answer is that they are norms of international law that are formulated in abstract, universally applicable terms. For example, Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." Such a norm contains no reference to any context or circumstances that might justify limiting those rights – and therein lies the power of human rights language. When lawyers or activists attach a particular situation to a human rights norm, they seek to persuade others to see that situation in isolation from its historical context and usual justifications, as a violation. Human rights norms are ahistorical and decontextualized, and that is the point of invoking them.

Economic history · Human rights · Political science · West germany · European history and politics · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · International Law and Human Rights · Law

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