The United States, human rights, and moral autonomy in the post-cold war world

Abstract

The question of accountability in human rights can too easily be reduced to those of the measurement of behavior by a general standard and the execution of appropriate sanctions. The argument of this paper is that from the time of Thomas Jefferson to the present the application of standards is locked in a dialectic with the need for moral autonomy on the part of individuals and communities. The actor is not a transparent locus of behavior, and neither is the enforcer a neutral channel of universal justice. While the universality of human rights impels responsibility to general standards, the humanity of human rights requires attention to the concrete conditions of action.