Encore Course - Global Revolution in Human Rights
Course Overview and Historical Perspectives
January 24, 2010
Historical Sources of Human Rights
Teachings of the great religions
Philosophical thought
Institutional and legal developments
I. Teachings of the great religions
Judaism
Christianity
Islam
Buddhism
Hinduism
Taoism
II. Philosophical thought
Renaissance (begins in 14th century)
Reformation (begins in the 16th century)
Enlightenment (begins in the 17th century)
-Ascribed (inherited) status gives way to achieved (earned) status
-Superstition and religious dogma give way to reason and science (including assumptions about “natural law”)
III. Institutional and legal developments
Early National Revolutionary Documents
-Magna Carta (1215)
-English Bill of Rights (1689)
-American Declaration of Independence (1776)
-American Constitution and the Bill of Rights (1789)
-French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1788)
-Abolition of slavery and the slave trade
-Efforts to make warfare more humane
-Promotion of women's suffrage
-Covenant of the League of Nations
-Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms (Freedom of Speech and Religion,
Freedom from Fear and Want) (1941)
(Norman Rockwell paintings of the four freedoms)
-Atlantic Charter (1941)
-Declaration by United Nations (1942)
-Charter of the United Nations (1945)
"We the peoples of the United Nations determined: to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, (Preamble)
-Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) (video) (text)