ABSTRACT
This part will be concerned with what Kirsten (2002) has termed, somewhat ironically, the ‘rise and rise’ of human rights in the post-1945 period. Chapter 7, 8 and 9 will focus on how rights re-emerged from the shadow of Dicey’s version of the rule of law in western Europe and, especially, the United States to become central to the formation of the UN. Chapter 10 will describe post-1946 developments in Japan, which are widely regarded as demonstrating both the possibility, and the beneficial effects, of introducing rights discourse into non-western societies. And finally, Chapter 11 will begin by outlining the philosophical resistance to any reformulation of human rights discourse before describing the major challenges that it faces today. The chapter ends by showing how these challenges have transformed the sociological approach to human rights.
