ABSTRACT
Human rights entered the world scene after the Second World War. The most obvious change in the transition from natural to human rights was the replacement of their philosophical ground and institutional sources. Law-making in the huge business of human rights has been taken over by government representatives, diplomats, policy advisers, international civil servants and human rights experts. According to psychoanalytical theory, the desire of the other is not addressed solely to the other person but also to the symbolic order, to law. Governments, international and non-governmental organisations all agree that human rights are the best, if not the only, way left for promoting the intrinsic value of a legal order. Codification, from Justinian to the Code Napoleon, has always been the ultimate exercise of legislative sovereignty, the supreme expression of state power. The international mechanisms are rudimentary and can scarcely improve, while national sovereignty remains the paramount principle in law.
