HRTS 2115 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: International Humanitarian Law, Negative And Positive Rights, Individual And Group Rights

• School: University of Iowa
• Department: University of Iowa Center for Human Rights
• Course: HRTS 2115
• Professor: Jo Butterfield and Amy Weismann

Document Summary

Distinctions between human rights law and humanitarian law. Distinctions between human rights declarations and human rights covenants, conventions or treaties. Describes a system of right or justice held to be common to all humans. Derived from nature rather than from rules of society. 1215 magna carta places limits on the king"s power. Designed to limit the power of the monarch. E. g. demanded that the king offer compensation for property taken during the war. Concept of natural rights - from subjects to citizens. Grounded in the idea that people had natural rights and governments existed to protect the rights of the individual from arbitrary abuse by the state. Not all people enjoyed access to these revolutionary rights. Exploitation resulted from the proliferation of capitalist economies and industrialization. Rights guaranteed (or denied) at the level of the nation-state. First idea of class struggle was created by the russian revolution.