As ‘rights’ proliferate, they can conflict. Is it better to dedicate resources to girls’ education or preventing police from torturing prisoners?

Hypocrisy Rules

By TOD LINDBERG

In “The Twilight of Human Rights Law,” Eric A. Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, sets himself two tasks. The first is to trace unsentimentally the history of the international treaties and institutions that set forth and attempt to promote human rights. Here, he succeeds admirably. The second task is to argue that these treaties and institutions have done little or nothing world-wide to advance people’s well-being. Human-rights treaties, he concludes, “were not so much an act of idealism but an act of hubris.” While ultimately unconvincing, Mr. Posner’s skepticism is bracing, and his claims usefully force readers back to the question of what we mean when we talk about human rights.

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