Essays on Religion and Human Rights

This collection of seminal essays by David Little addresses the subject of human rights in relation to the historical settings in which its language was drafted and adopted. Featuring five original essays, Little articulates his long-standing view that fascist practices before and during World War II vivified the wrongfulness of deliberately inflicting severe pain, injury, and destruction for self-serving purposes and that the human rights corpus, developed in response, was designed to outlaw all practices of arbitrary force. Drawing on the natural rights tradition, the book contends that while there must be an accountable human rights standard, it should nevertheless guarantee wide latitude for the expression and practice of religious and other conscientious beliefs, consistent with outlawing arbitrary force. This book further details the theoretical grounds of the relationship between religion and human rights, and concludes with essays on U.S. policy and the restraint of force in regard to terrorism and to cases like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. With a foreword by John Kelsey, this book stands as a capstone of the work of this influential writer on religion, philosophy, and law.