International Human Rights Law: Historical development of human rights — From Natural Law to the Revolutionary Declarations
How ideas of natural law, early charters and the 18th-century declarations laid the groundwork for modern human rights.
Try 3 questions
1. Which ancient school of philosophy taught that all humans share reason and belong to one world community?
- The Stoics
- The Epicureans
- The Sophists
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Answer: The Stoics
Stoics like Zeno and later Seneca saw every person as a citizen of a single cosmopolis bound by a common reason, an idea later natural-law thinkers built on.
2. Natural law theory holds that certain rights...
- Exist independently of any government
- Belong only to citizens of a state
- Exist only once a parliament enacts them
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Answer: Exist independently of any government
In natural law, rights flow from human nature or reason, so a government can recognize or violate them but does not create them.
3. The natural-law maxim 'an unjust law is no law at all' implies that...
- Courts must enforce any properly enacted law
- Only written statutes count as real law
- Law draws authority from justice, not enactment alone
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Answer: Law draws authority from justice, not enactment alone
The maxim, associated with Augustine and Aquinas, holds that a command contrary to justice lacks the moral force of true law.
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