The Influence of History on Human Rights
A joint post by Adam Chilton & Eric Posner: In a new working paper–The Influence of History on States’ Compliance with Human Rights Obligations–we argue that scholars studying human rights could...
View ArticleThe human development index
The human development index (HDI) was developed in the wake of Amartya Sen’s critique of development policy that is oriented toward GDP growth. Sen argued that development policy should promote freedom...
View ArticleWhat’s the best use for Human Rights Watch’s budget?
For the past few years, I’ve been flogging the idea that money spent to enforce human rights would be more productively devoted to development aid. I make this argument in a book; and I have developed...
View ArticleThe Syrian refugee crisis
I explain why people overestimate the risk posed by the Syrian refugees in Slate. I argue that the xenophobia/nativism/bigotry arguments are unfair.
View ArticleDo human rights treaties make a difference? Part n
Adam Chilton and I have posted a new paper that criticizes some recent studies that suggest that they do. We show in our paper that once one takes into account time trends, the positive results...
View ArticleOlympic Participation and Women’s Rights
A Guest Post by Adam Chilton: Are the number of women on a country’s Olympic team a good proxy for women’s rights in that country? Yesterday, Ryan Briggs–a political scientist at Virginia...
View ArticleRights Without Resources
A Guest Post by Adam Chilton and Mila Versteeg. The world’s constitutions have increasingly included commitments to protect social and economic rights. For example, as the figure above shows, by 2012...
View ArticleHuman Rights “Juries” at the United Nations
A Guest Post by Adam Chilton. In 1946, the United Nations created an organization charged with promoting and protecting human rights around the world called the Commission on Human Rights (CHR). The...
View ArticleAre human rights dead?
I debate with Professor Ian Hurd. I chose to define “human rights” as human rights law. He used a more capacious definition, treating “human rights” as any moral assertion by oppressed people against...
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