The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been called one of the most powerful documents in human history. Today, the mere accusation of violations of the rights outlined in this document cows political leaders and riles the international community. Yet as a nonbinding document with no mechanism for enforcement, it holds almost no legal authority. Indeed, since its adoption, the Declaration's authority has been portrayed not as legal or political but as moral. Rather than providing a set of rules to follow or laws to obey, it represents a set of standards against which the world's societies are measured. It has achieved a level of rhetorical power and influence unlike anything else in modern world politics, becoming the foundational myth of the human rights project. Seeing the Myth in Human Rights presents an interdisciplinary investigation into the role of mythmaking in the creation and propagation of the Universal Declaration. Pushing beyond conventional understandings of myth, which tend to view such narratives as vehicles either for the spreading of particular religious dogmas or for the spreading of erroneous, even duplicitous, discourses, Jenna Reinbold mobilizes a robust body of scholarship within the field of religious studies to help us appreciate myth as a mode of human labor designed to generate meaning, solidarity, and order. This usage does not merely parallel today's scholarship on myth; it dovetails in unexpected ways with a burgeoning body of scholarship on the origin and function of contemporary human rights, and it puts the field of religious studies into conversation with the fields of political philosophy, critical legal studies, and human rights historiography. For Reinbold, myth is a phenomenon that is not merely germane to the exploration of specific religious narratives but is key to a broader understanding of the nature of political authority in the modern world.

Seeing the Myth in Human Rights explores the role of myth in the creation and propagation of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Drawing on records, publications, and speeches from the Declaration's creators as well as current scholarship on human rights, Jenna Reinbold sees the Declaration as an exemplar of modern mythmaking.

In this groundbreaking and provocative new book, philosopher of science David N. Stamos challenges the current conceptions of human rights, and argues that the existence of universal human rights is a modern myth. Using an evolutionary analysis to support his claims, Stamos traces the origin of the myth from the English Levellers of 1640s London to our modern day. Theoretical defenses of the belief in human rights are critically examined, including defenses of nonconsensus concepts. In the final chapter Stamos develops a method of naturalized normative ethics, which he then applies to topics routinely dealt with in terms of human rights. In all of this Stamos hopes to show that there is a better way of dealing with matters of ethics and justice, a way that involves applying the whole of our evolved moral being, rather than only parts of it, and that is fiction-free.

Most Western liberal democracies are parties to the United Nations Refugees Convention and all are committed to the recognition of basic human rights, but they also spend billions fortifying their borders, detaining unauthorised immigrants, and policing migration. Meanwhile, public debate over the West’s obligations to unauthorised immigrants is passionate, vitriolic, and divisive. Refugees and the Myth of Human Rights combines philosophical, historical, and legal analysis to clarify the key concepts at stake in the debate, and to demonstrate the threat posed by contemporary border regimes to rights protection and the rule of law within liberal democracies. Using the political philosophy of John Locke and Immanuel Kant the book highlights the tension in liberalism between partiality towards one’s compatriots and the universalism of human rights and brings this tension to life through an examination of Hannah Arendt’s account of the rise and decline of the modern nation-state. It provides a novel reading of Arendt’s critique of human rights and her concept of the right to have rights. The book argues that the right to have rights must be secured globally in limited form, but that recognition of its significance should spur expansive changes to border policy within and between liberal states.

The notion of human dignity plays a central role in human rights discourse. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognition of the inherent dignity and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. The international Covenants on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and on Civil and Political Rights state that all human rights derive from inherent dignity of the human person. Some modern constitutions include human dignity as a fundamental non-derogable right; others mention it as a right to be protected alongside other rights. It is not only lawyers concerned with human rights who have to contend with the concept of human dignity. The concept has been discussed by, inter alia, theologians, philosophers, and anthropologists. In this book leading scholars in constitutional and international law, human rights, theology, philosophy, history and classics, from various countries, discuss the concept of human dignity from differing perspectives. These perspectives help to elucidate the meaning of the concept in human rights discourse.

In this groundbreaking and provocative new book, philosopher of science David N. Stamos challenges the current conceptions of human rights, and argues that the existence of universal human rights is a modern myth. Using an evolutionary analysis to support his claims, Stamos traces the origin of the myth from the English Levellers of 1640s London to our modern day. Theoretical defenses of the belief in human rights are critically examined, including defenses of nonconsensus concepts. In the final chapter Stamos develops a method of naturalized normative ethics, which he then applies to topics routinely dealt with in terms of human rights. In all of this Stamos hopes to show that there is a better way of dealing with matters of ethics and justice, a way that involves applying the whole of our evolved moral being, rather than only parts of it, and that is fiction-free.