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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These rights are as cherished today as when Thomas Jefferson enumerated them 231 years ago, but traditional faith isn't doing as well (witness Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens). If God goes, do our rights go with him? Not according to Alan Dershowitz, who in Rights from Wrongs proposes the theory that they come not from God (theists have no monopoly on moral behavior), nature (whose first rule is selfishness), or the law itself (Dershowitz is no fan of legal positivism). Rather, he argues that, in a sense, two wrongs do make a right: that our rights are built from the ground up, in the manner of the common law: we "agree upon the least desirable ways of life and seek to protect against those evils." Dershowitz is likely to lose some readers, especially those who trend toward the right, in the book's second half, where he begins to apply his theory to issues including organ donation, separation of church and state, animal rights, and immigration. Regardless, Rights from Wrongs is a fine companion piece to the "atheist trilogy": well-argued, thought-provoking, and likely to appeal to those interested in politics and philosophy as well as religion and law. --Benjamin Lukoff
From Publishers Weekly
The double meaning in Dershowitz's title indicates just one of the insightful thoughts that mark the well-known Harvard law professor's latest work. In tracing the evolution of rights, he argues forcefully against any concept of natural rights deriving from religion and from law. Defining himself as a pragmatist, Dershowitz asserts that human rights derive from the world's experience with "wrongs," i.e., injustice. Only after seeing genocide, for example, did the notion develop that this was a violation of human rights. Dershowitz (Supreme Injustice) has a rare ability to develop complex ideas in readable prose. In the book's first half, he carefully examines the rationale for an experiential approach to rights; the second half applies this approach to some of today's hot-button issues. Dershowitz is often on the liberal side: for instance, he has little stomach for literal interpretations of the Constitution—what he calls the "dead constitution" approach. But he can surprise: he argues, for instance, that Justice Scalia's "dead constitution" approach led him to a firmer defense of individual rights than other justices in the recent Hamdi case. Whether conservative or liberal, absolutist or relativist, readers will find areas of disagreement, but most will concur that a talented and creative legal mind is at work.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
See all Editorial Reviews
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These rights are as cherished today as when Thomas Jefferson enumerated them 231 years ago, but traditional faith isn't doing as well (witness Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens). If God goes, do our rights go with him? Not according to Alan Dershowitz, who in Rights from Wrongs proposes the theory that they come not from God (theists have no monopoly on moral behavior), nature (whose first rule is selfishness), or the law itself (Dershowitz is no fan of legal positivism). Rather, he argues that, in a sense, two wrongs do make a right: that our rights are built from the ground up, in the manner of the common law: we "agree upon the least desirable ways of life and seek to protect against those evils." Dershowitz is likely to lose some readers, especially those who trend toward the right, in the book's second half, where he begins to apply his theory to issues including organ donation, separation of church and state, animal rights, and immigration. Regardless, Rights from Wrongs is a fine companion piece to the "atheist trilogy": well-argued, thought-provoking, and likely to appeal to those interested in politics and philosophy as well as religion and law. --Benjamin Lukoff
From Publishers Weekly
The double meaning in Dershowitz's title indicates just one of the insightful thoughts that mark the well-known Harvard law professor's latest work. In tracing the evolution of rights, he argues forcefully against any concept of natural rights deriving from religion and from law. Defining himself as a pragmatist, Dershowitz asserts that human rights derive from the world's experience with "wrongs," i.e., injustice. Only after seeing genocide, for example, did the notion develop that this was a violation of human rights. Dershowitz (Supreme Injustice) has a rare ability to develop complex ideas in readable prose. In the book's first half, he carefully examines the rationale for an experiential approach to rights; the second half applies this approach to some of today's hot-button issues. Dershowitz is often on the liberal side: for instance, he has little stomach for literal interpretations of the Constitution—what he calls the "dead constitution" approach. But he can surprise: he argues, for instance, that Justice Scalia's "dead constitution" approach led him to a firmer defense of individual rights than other justices in the recent Hamdi case. Whether conservative or liberal, absolutist or relativist, readers will find areas of disagreement, but most will concur that a talented and creative legal mind is at work.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
See all Editorial Reviews
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