On Human Rights

The goal of "On Human Rights" is to clarify the nature of human rights and thus promote a more realistic and effective human rights discourse. Human rights, in the author's view, are tools to protect persons in their capacity as normative agents, i.e., as agents able to choose and pursue a conception of the good life. Such agents need autonomy, the basic necessities of life, and liberty from interference by other persons. These core requirements of normative agency mark the boundary of human rights. So far so good. The book is sensible and clearly written, and the theoretical sections, especially the chapter on the metaphysics of human rights, are throught-provoking. It stumbles, however, when it goes on to treat "applied" or "empirical" topics such as international law, the right to die, the right to privacy, or democracy. These sections suffer from the author's understandable (and acknowledged) lack of expertise in law, political science, health care and other issues. The discussion is not terribly fine-grained, and tends to meander.