The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Holocaust : an endangered connection /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Morsink, Johannes, author.
Imprint:Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press, ©2019.
Description:ix, 333 pages ; 23 cm
Language:English
Subject:United Nations. -- General Assembly. -- Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations. General Assembly)
Human rights.
Human rights movements.
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Influence.
LAW -- General.
Human rights.
Human rights movements.
Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11763159
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9781626166295
1626166293
9781626166288
1626166285
Notes:Includes bibliographical references (pages 315-323) and index.
Summary:Johannes Morsink argues that the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the human rights movement today are direct descendants of revulsion to the Holocaust and the desire to never let it happen again. Much recent scholarship about human rights has severed this link between the Holocaust, the Universal Declaration, and contemporary human rights activism in favor of seeing the 1970s as the era of genesis. Morsink forcefully presents his case that the Universal Declaration was indeed a meaningful though underappreciated document for the human rights movement and that the declaration and its significance cannot be divorced from the Holocaust. He reexamines this linkage through the working papers of the commission that drafted the declaration as well as other primary sources. This work seeks to reset scholarly understandings of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the foundations of the contemporary human rights movement.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction : the Universal Declaration as postcard
  • The historic moment
  • New historians and the declaration
  • Moyn's dismissal of the connection
  • The 1940s moment of human rights
  • The philosophic moment
  • The moral engine of the system
  • Portable, not territorial.