International Human Rights Law: Why Following Orders Fails
From the Magna Carta to the International Criminal Court, the ideas and institutions that turned human dignity into binding law.
Try 3 questions
1. The Magna Carta of 1215 is often hailed as a human rights milestone. Whom did it mainly protect at the time?
- All the king's subjects, equally
- Barons and free men, against the king
- Serfs and peasants, against landlords
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Answer: Barons and free men, against the king
It was a deal between King John and rebellious barons; its protections reached free men, not the unfree majority, and only later became a universal symbol.
2. In 1791 Olympe de Gouges answered France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen with what?
- A constitution for a new republic
- A treaty abolishing the slave trade
- A Declaration of the Rights of Woman
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Answer: A Declaration of the Rights of Woman
Her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen exposed that the 'universal' rights of 1789 left out half of humanity.
3. The 1550 Valladolid debate, featuring Bartolomé de las Casas, was an early argument about what?
- The legality of the Atlantic slave trade
- Freedom of the press in Spain's colonies
- The rights and humanity of Indigenous Americans
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Answer: The rights and humanity of Indigenous Americans
Las Casas argued against Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda that Indigenous peoples were fully rational human beings who could not be enslaved or conquered by force.
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