Essays on Religion and Human Rights
Ground to Stand On

This collection of essays addresses human rights in relation to the historical settings in which its language was drafted and adopted.

David Little (Author)

9781107072626, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 March 2015

420 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.2 cm, 0.75 kg

This collection of essays by David Little addresses human rights in relation to the historical settings in which its language was drafted and adopted. Featuring five original essays, Little articulates his view that fascist practices before and during World War II vivified the wrongfulness of deliberately inflicting severe pain, injury, and destruction for self-serving purposes and that the human rights corpus, developed in response, was designed to outlaw all practices of arbitrary force. He contends that while there must be an accountable human rights standard, it should guarantee latitude for the expression and practice of beliefs, consistent with outlawing arbitrary force. Little details the theoretical grounds of the relationship between religion and human rights, and concludes with essays on US policy and the restraint of force in regard to terrorism. With a foreword by John Kelsay, this book is a capstone of the work of this influential writer on religion, philosophy, and law.

Acknowledgments
Foreword John Kelsay
Introduction
Part I. In Defense of Rights: 1. Ground to stand on
2. Critical reflections on The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History by Samuel Moyn
Part II. Religion and Rights: 3. Religion, human rights, and the secular state
4. Religion, human rights, and public reason: protecting the freedom of religion or belief
5. Rethinking tolerance: a human rights approach
6. A bang or a whimper?: Assessing some recent challenges to religious freedom in the United States
7. Religion and human rights: a personal testament
Part III. Religion and the History of Rights: 8. Religion, peace, and the origins of nationalism
9. Roger Williams and the Puritan background of the establishment clause
Part IV. Public Policy and the Restraint of Force: 10. Terrorism, public emergency, and international order
11. The academic in times of war
12. Obama and Niebuhr: religion and American foreign policy
Afterword: ethics, religion, and human consciousness: further reflections on a 'two-tiered' or 'bifocal' approach to justification
Appendix. Ethics and scholarship
Index.

Subject Areas: International human rights law [LBBR], Law [L], Human rights [JPVH], Religious ethics [HRAM1]