ABSTRACT
Laws transform moral rights into legal rights, and yet some moral rights transcend the law. The "right to life" is a moral claim, and the right to the presumption of innocence is a legal right that recognizes a moral right. This chapter reviews how moral rights became legal rights through struggles for representative government and the development of international human rights law after World War II. It looks at environmental rights in international law, as this is the context for the global debate about our duty to protect and preserve the environment. With this background in environmental ethics and law, the chapter considers arguments for animal rights, and then draws conclusions about an environmental rights strategy. The Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was approved without a dissenting vote by the UN General Assembly in 1948, assert that every nation and citizen has a moral duty to protect international human rights.
