Rights from wrongs: a secular theory of the origins of rights

Abstract

Where do our rights come from? Does natural really exist outside of what is written in constitutions and legal statutes? If so, why are rights not the same everywhere and in all eras? On the other hand, if rights are nothing more than the product of human law, why should we ever allow them to override the popular will? In Rights from Wrongs, renowned legal scholar Alan Dershowitz puts forward a wholly new and compelling answer to this age-old dilemma: Rights, he argues, do not come from God, nature, logic, or law alone. They arise out of particular human experiences with injustice. Rights from Wrongs is the first book to propose a theory of rights that emerges not from a theory of perfect justice but from its opposite: from the bottom up, from trial and error, and from our collective experience of injustice. Human rights come from human wrongs. [Dershowitz's] underlying theory is one that can be neutrally applied by people residing at all positions within the political spectrum...Perhaps if his views were understood by more people, there would be both a toning down of the political rhetoric. -Tampa Tribune

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 80 citations exist upstream.