The twilight of human rights law / Eric A. Posner.

Cover; Series; The Twilight of Human Rights Law; Copyright; Contents; Editor's Note; Introduction; 1 The History of International Human Rights Law; 1.1 Prehistory-Before World War II; 1.2 The Universal Declaration; 1.3 The Cold War Era; 1.4 The Modern Era; 2 The Law and Institutions of Human Rights; 2.1 The Proliferation of Treaties; 2.2 The UN Committees, Council, and High Commission; 2.3 The European Court and Other Regional Bodies; 2.4 International Criminal Law and Judicial Institutions; 2.5 National Institutions; 3 Why Do States Enter into Human Rights Treaties?

3.1 To Improve Human Rights3.2. The Costs of Entering into Human Rights Treaties; 3.3. The "Western Imperialism" Criticism and Its Limits; 4 Do States Comply with Human Rights Treaties?; 4.1 Human Rights Treaties and the Question of Compliance; 4.2 Some Data; 4.3 The Studies; 5 Why Do States Comply (or Not Comply) with Human Rights Treaties?; 5.1 International Incentives to Comply; 5.2. Domestic Incentives to Comply; 5.3 Ambiguity and Inconsistency; 5.4 Why International Organizations Are No Solution; 5.5 A Failure of Will; 5.6 The Problem of Epistemic Uncertainty.

5.7 The Importance of Political Participation; 5.8 Reprise; 6 Human Rights and War; 6.1 The Human Rights Peace; 6.2 Humanitarian Interventions; 6.3 The League of Democracies; 7 A Fresh Start: Human Rights and Development; 7.1 Three Dead Ends; 7.2 The White Man's Burden; Acknowledgments; Appendix: List of Rights; Notes; Further Readings; Index.

"Countries solemnly intone their commitment to human rights, and they ratify endless international treaties and conventions designed to signal that commitment. At the same time, there has been no marked decrease in human rights violations, even as the language of human rights has become the dominant mode of international moral criticism. Well-known violators like Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan have sat on the U.N. Council on Human Rights. But it''s not just the usual suspects that flagrantly disregard the treaties. Brazil pursues extrajudicial killings. South Africa employs violence against protestors. India tolerate child labor and slavery. The United States tortures. In The Twilight of Human Rights Law the eminent legal scholar Eric A. Posner argues that purposefully unenforceable human rights treaties are at the heart of the world's failure to address human rights violations. Because countries fundamentally disagree about what the public good requires and how governments should allocate limited resources in order to advance it, they have established a regime that gives them maximum flexibility--paradoxically characterized by a huge number of vague human rights that encompass nearly all human activity, along with weak enforcement machinery that churns out new rights but cannot enforce any of them. Posner looks to the foreign aid model instead, contending that we should judge compliance by comprehensive, concrete metrics like poverty reduction, instead of relying on ambiguous, weak, and easily manipulated checklists of specific rights."-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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