International Law and Human Rights

Abstract

One of the paramount problems of our time is how law, including international law, can be made best to serve the purpose of maintaining a free society. In this comprehensive and insightful study Professor Lauterpacht brings to finest conception and expression his many distinguished contributions to meeting this problem. Within its much controverted domain, his book is unique for its clarity in statement of goals, for the realism with which it describes trends in international doctrine and practice and in conditioning factors in international society, and for the specificity and cogency of its recommendations. The author's stated purpose is to study and appraise the human rights provisions of the United Nations Charter, and subsequent efforts to make these provisions effective, against "the wider background of the problem of the subjects of international law and of the interaction of the law of nations and the law of nature in relation to the enduring issue of human government—the securing of the natural and inalienable rights of man," and he breaks his task into three parts: The Rights of Man and the Law of Nations, Human Rights under the Charter of the United Nations, and The International Bill of the Rights of Man (comprising the author's own detailed recommendations for content and implementation).