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3 Hum. Rts. Q. 147 (1981)
Human Rights: Thirty Years after the Universal Declaration

handle is hein.journals/hurq3 and id is 445 raw text is: Book Reviews other sense is never explained and can- not be surmised from the details of the argument. Shue also conceives of a right as a rational basis for demanding that one's enjoyment of a substance be socially guaranteed against standard threats. This may well be so. I am inclined to agree that society ought to protect the individual in the enjoyment of his or her rights, although I would add that this is only a prima facie obligation. Nevertheless, I am bothered by the way in which Shue takes this to be intrinsic to the very concept of a moral right. More likely that the state ought to pro- tect the rights of the individual is a moral principle standing in need of some independent justification rather than an analytic truth. In any event, one must be perfectly clear on the pre- cise connection between the right and the protection of the right. Shue's argu- ment for the existence of a basic right to subsistence hinges on this connec- tion. It seems to me that he wants to argue from the existence of any moral right at all plus the fact that subsistence is necessary to the enjoyment of that right, that the state ought to protect the individual in the enjoyment of sub- sistence. Thus far his argument strikes me as compelling. But just how does this establish the actual existence of a moral right to subsistence rather than, for example, that the individual ought to have a legal right to subsistence? One needs a fuller explanation of just how protection enters into the concep- tion of a moral right and why. In a way, my complaints are unfair. Basic Rights does not pretend to be a major contribution to a general theory of rights. Its primary concern is with our moral interpretation and response to a world in which some people enjoy affluence and others live, if they do not starve, in dire poverty. It articulates a conception of basic rights that speaks to the suffering of the needy and pro- vides moral guidance to those of us fortunate enough to be in a position to help. Its strengths are its intellectual honesty in facing the hard challenges to the conception of a right to subsis- tence, its imaginative argument to show that a basic right to subsistence should be taken seriously, and its application of a moral theory to United States for- eign policy. Its Achilles heel is the con- cept of a right it employs. To an ana- lytic philosopher this weakness is clear, but to a moral agent, a responsible citi- zen, or conscientious politician seeking guidance, this is a minor flaw in a volume full of moral insight. And to the moral philosopher wondering whether there really can be any eco- nomic human rights, Basic Rights is also invaluable, both because it can prevent us from dismissing such rights prema- turely, and because it reveals what re- mains undone to define and establish them. -Carl Wellman Washington University HUMAN RIGHTS: THIRTY YEARS AFTER THE UNIVERSAL DECLARA- TION, edited by B.G. Ramcharan. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979) 274 pp. So much is written and spoken today about the international promotion and protection of human rights that one tends to forget its status as a relatively new subject in world affairs. From the beginning of the modern state system in 1648 until the charter of the United Nations in 1945, the relation of citizens to their governments was considered

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