Books by Johannes Morsink

Johannes Morsink is Professor Emeritus of Political Philosophy at Drew University. He is author of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent and Inherent Human Rights: Philosophical Roots of the Universal Declaration, both of which are available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Morsink asserts that all people have human rights simply by virtue of being born into the human family and that we can know these rights without the aid of experts. He shows how the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights grew out of Enlightenment principles honed by a shared revulsion at the horrors of the Holocaust.

Johannes Morsink argues that the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the human rights movement today are direct descendants of revulsion to the Holocaust and the desire to never let it happen again. In doing so, he breaks with recent human rights scholarship that severs this important link and downplays the importance of the UDHR.

"A splendid volume . . . fused with political and philosophical insight into the fundamental concepts underlying the Declaration."-American Journal of International Law