Bringing Human Rights Home: A History of Human Rights in the United States (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081222079X ISBN 13: 9780812220797

Verlag: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Throughout its history, America's policies have alternatively embraced human rights, regarded them with ambivalence, or rejected them out of hand. The essays in Bringing Human Rights Home: A History of Human Rights in the United States put these shifting political winds into a larger historical perspective, from the country's very beginnings to the present day.

The contributing writers examine the global influences on early American attitudes toward human rights and, reviewing the twentieth century, note the high-water mark of human rights acceptance during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency. They examine the domestic tensions between civil and political rights on the one hand, and economic, social, and cultural rights on the other. Taking the long view, many of the contributors emphasize the role played by social movements and grassroots activists in pressing a human rights agenda from the bottom up.

The essays examine the centrality of human rights in the early and mid-twentieth-century civil rights movement, the breadth of subnational human rights activism in the face of federal inaction on a range of human rights issues, and the ways both post-9/11 developments and government responses to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina spurred grassroots activism in the United States. Several essays explore in depth the emergence of new advocacy strategies, both in the context of litigating for civil and political rights and through the lens of particular economic rights sectors, such as labor. Though the setbacks for human rights have been many, Bringing Human Rights Home demonstrates the strength and resilience of the U.S. human rights movement and offers hope for its future.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Cynthia Soohoo is Director of the U.S. Legal Program for the Center for Reproductive Rights. Catherine Albisa is Executive Director of the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative. Martha F. Davis is Professor of Law and Codirector of the Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy at Northeastern University.

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Preface

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home—so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. . . . Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.
—Eleanor Roosevelt

In the early 1990s, the term "U.S. human rights" would have probably elicited vague confusion and puzzled looks. Contemporary notions of human rights advocacy involved the criticism of rights abuses in other countries, and claims of human rights violations were leveled by, not at, the U.S. government. Although human rights documents and treaties purported to discuss universal rights obligations that applied to all countries, the prevailing wisdom was that the American people did not need human rights standards or international scrutiny to protect their rights. Many scholars and political scientists, who described themselves as "realists," expressed doubt that international human rights law could ever influence the behavior of a superpower such as the United States.

Yet segments of the American public have always believed that the struggle for human rights is relevant to the United States. One of the earliest uses of the term "human rights" is attributed to Frederick Douglass and his articulation of the fundamental rights of enslaved African Americans at a time when the United States did not recognize their humanity or their rights. At various times in U.S. history, the idea that all individuals have fundamental rights rooted in the concept of human dignity and that the international community might provide support in domestic rights struggles has resonated with marginalized and disenfranchised populations. Thus, it was no surprise that U.S. rights organizations, including the NAACP and American Jewish Congress, played a crucial role in the birth of the modern human rights movement. Both groups helped to ensure that human rights were included in the UN Charter.

Following the creation of the United Nations, many domestic social justice activists were interested in human rights standards and the development of international forums. Human rights offered the potential to expand both domestic concepts of rights and available forums and allies for their struggles. In the late 1940s and 1950s, Cold War imperatives forced mainstream social justice activists to limit their advocacy to civil claims rights, rather than broader human rights demands for economic and social rights, and to forgo international forums or criticism of the United States. At the same time, isolationists and Southern senators, opposed to international scrutiny of Jim Crow and segregation, were able to effectively prevent U.S. ratification of human rights treaties that required U.S. compliance with human rights standards.

As a result of these pressures, by the 1950s, the separation between international human rights and domestic civil rights appeared complete. Human rights advocacy came to be understood as involving challenges to oppressive regimes abroad, and domestic social justice activists focused on using civil rights claims within the domestic legal system to articulate and vindicate fundamental procedural and equality rights. Recent scholarship by Mary Dudziak and others point out that during the 1950s and 1960s, the United States' civil rights agenda was strongly influenced by concerns about international opinion because Jim Crow and domestic racial unrest threatened to undermine U.S. moral authority during the Cold War. However, although international pressures may have encouraged and supported reform within the United States, the main engine for change was the domestic legal system. Federal civil rights legislation and Supreme Court cases ending de jure segregation, expanding individual rights, and protecting the interests of poor people through the 1960s seemed to support the perception that the United States did not need human rights.

Soon after, however, the political climate began to shift. Changes on the Supreme Court led to a retreat in domestic protections of fundamental rights. By the end of the 1980s, the assault on domestic civil rights protections was well underway, as illustrated by political attacks on affirmative action and reproductive rights. Political leaders undermined long-standing social programs. President Ronald Reagan demonized the poor, claiming that welfare recipients were primarily defrauding the system and that women drove away from the welfare offices in Cadillacs. This image of the "welfare queen" created the foundation for further attacks on the rights of the poor in the years to come.

From the 1990s to the present, the deterioration of legal rights for Americans continued. Congress and increasingly conservative federal judges narrowed remedies for employment discrimination and labor violations and restricted prisoners' access to the courts. The legislature and executive branch over time also allotted fewer resources, and even less political will, to government enforcement of laws protecting Americans from job discrimination, health and safety violations in the workplace, and environmental toxins. Funding for legal services was cut.

Alongside this gradual unraveling of rights in the United States, global events shifted dramatically with the end of the Cold War. With new global political alignments and international dialogue, the standard politicization of human rights no longer made sense. This opened an important window of opportunity for activists in the United States. Human rights—including economic, social, and cultural rights—could now be claimed for all people, even those within the United States, without triggering accusations of aiding communist adversaries.

As the relevance of international human rights standards grew within the United States, even the federal judiciary took note. The Supreme Court issued a series of decisions citing international human rights standards regarding the death penalty and gay rights. These opinions were sharply criticized by the most reactionary politicians and members of the Court itself. In 2002, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas admonished his fellow justices not to "impose foreign moods, fads, or fashions on Americans." Reactionary pundits and scholars picked up on this theme arguing that compliance with human rights standards is antidemocratic because it overrules legislative decisions that constitute the will of the majority.

Nonetheless, the trend toward applying human rights in the United States continued to quietly and gradually deepen until a series of events jolted the American psyche and quickly moved the issue of human rights to the fore. These developments finally forced the mainstream public to consider what human rights had to do with us.

First, as the nation began to recover from the 9/11 attacks, many were shocked by the antiterrorism tactics of the Bush administration. To deflect criticism, the administration claimed that torture and cruel and degrading treatment were legal under U.S. law and that international law prohibitions on torture and cruel treatment were not relevant. Voices both within the United States and from the international community challenged the Bush administration, pointing out that torture is a universal human rights violation, no matter where it occurs.

Next, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina also provided a stark illustration that poor, minority, and marginalized communities need human rights protections and that domestic law falls well short of even articulating, much less remedying, a wide range of fundamental rights violations. This remains particularly true when affirmative government obligations to protect life, health, and well-being are involved. The government's abandonment of thousands of people too poor to own a car and the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 081222079X
• ISBN 13: 9780812220797
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 424
• Herausgeber: Soohoo Cynthia, Albisa Catherine, Davis Martha F.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland