ABSTRACT
The last 50 years have seen enormous advances not only in the statutory provision of human rights legislation, but also in the political importance of human rights. The literature on human rights, and especially the reports of legal cases involving human rights law, is huge. Anthony Appiah suggests that human rights are more than an expression of Western Enlightenment values, and that group rights may be important, provided that they do not endanger individual rights. A sharp postmodern account of the development of human rights has been given by Costas Douzinas in The End of Human Rights: Critical Legal Thought at the Turn of the Century. Buddhist conceptions of human rights might derive from a basic value of non-violence. It is interesting that Ignatieff quotes Taylor on the side of his 'thin universalism', but Taylor has himself expressed concern that transcendence may be too quickly ruled out by Enlightenment perspectives on ethical issues.
