Can Human Rights Survive?: The crisis of authority

In this set of essays, originally presented as the  Hamlyn Lectures, Conor Gearty considers whether human rights can survive the challenges of the war on terror, the revival of political religion, and the steady erosion of the world's natural resources. He also looks deeper than this to consider some fundamental questions: What are human rights? How can we tell what they are? Why should we believe in their existence? In his first essay, Gearty asks how the idea of human rights needs to be made to work in our age of relativism, uncertainty and anxiety. In the second, he assesses the dangers inherent in the legalisation of rights generally, and in particular how the idea of human rights has coped with its incorporation in legal form in the UK Human Rights Act, arguing that the British record is much better and more democratic than many human rights enthusiasts allow. In his final essay, Gearty confronts the challenge that may destroy the language of human rights for the generations that follow us: the bogus war on terror. This book will appeal to everyone concerned with the global challenges to human rights today.