Revisiting the Origins of Human Rights

Pamela Slotte is an academy research fellow at the Academy of Finland and a senior research fellow at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki. Miia Halme-Tuomisaari is a research fellow at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights. She is also the Research Director and co-creator of Allegra Lab (allegralaboratory.net).

• Foreword. History of human rights as political intervention in the present Martti Koskenniemi; 1. Revisiting the origins of human rights: introduction Miia Halme-Tuomisaari and Pamela Slotte; Part I. Foundations: Antiquity to the Enlightenment: 2. Human rights in antiquity? Revisiting anachronism and Roman law Jacob Giltaij and Kaius Tuori; 3. Medieval natural rights discourse Virpi Mäkinen; 4. Human rights and the Thomist tradition Annabel Brett; Part II. Pluralities of Discourses and Rights: The Enlightenment and Single-Issue Causes in the Nineteenth Century: 5. Revolutionary rights Lynn Hunt; 6. Giuseppe Mazzini in (and beyond) the history of human rights Samuel Moyn; 7. Constituting the Imperial community: rights, common good, and authority in Britain's Atlantic empire, 1607–1815 Lauren Benton and Aaron Slater; 8. Human rights discourse in women's rights conventions in the United States, 1848–70 Kathryn Kish Sklar; 9. The peace movement and human rights Martin Ceadel; 10. Socialism and the language of rights: the origins and implications of economic rights Gregory Claeys; Part III. Institutional Practices and Relations of Rights: Toward the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 11. André Mandelstam and the internationalization of human rights (1869–1949) Dzovinar Kévonian; 12. From League of Nations mandates to decolonization: a brief history of rights Taina Tuori; 13. 'Blessed are the peacemakers': Christian internationalism, ecumenical voices and the quest for human rights Pamela Slotte; 14. Lobbying for relevance: American internationalists, French civil libertarians and the UDHR Miia Halme-Tuomisaari; 15. The Cold War and the rise of an American conception of human rights, 1945–8 Olivier Barsalou; 16. Afterword Conor Gearty.

'As part of the growing interest in the history of human rights, 'Revisiting the Origins of Human Rights' offers a dizzying array of insights into how 'rights' came to be mobilized, and how context and perspective, imagination and discourse, or ideology and narrative are not just of historiographical interest: they are the very key to understanding what rights are. Indispensable reading for historians of human rights and human rights practitioners alike.' Frédéric Mégret, McGill University, Montreal