To refer to documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a series of ‘bumper stickers devoid of substance’ - as one speaker did at the ‘Fairness, Justice and Human Rights’ conference last Saturday - is to overlook an important point.
While it is true to say states often paid only lip service to its principles, it is impossible to imagine such a strong statement as the Universal Declaration emerging from an international gathering today.
In 1948, the recent world war focused delegates’ minds on a document that referenced lofty aims in unequivocal terms. It is those terms upon which subsequent work has been hung. Some work involved appending further ‘bumper stickers’, such as the ‘right’ to the enjoyment of ‘the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health’ contained in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
As professor Paul Hunt told the conference, reports written by lawyers and other professionals are both drawing on, and informing, the jurisprudence that can make those rights a reality. ‘Considered attempts’ to work out what that health standard means inform the view courts take of such rights.
Delegates of ’48 who injected the ‘flash of anger’ that runs through the Universal Declaration would approve of the role now played by lawyers. In turn, we should recognise the importance of their work - even though it was ‘only’ words.
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