Description
Book SynopsisThroughout its history, America''s policies have alternatively embraced human rights, regarded them with ambivalence, or rejected them out of hand. The essays in Bringing Human Rights Home: A History of Human Rights in the United States put these shifting political winds into a larger historical perspective, from the country''s very beginnings to the present day.
The contributing writers examine the global influences on early American attitudes toward human rights and, reviewing the twentieth century, note the high-water mark of human rights acceptance during Franklin Delano Roosevelt''s presidency. They examine the domestic tensions between civil and political rights on the one hand, and economic, social, and cultural rights on the other. Taking the long view, many of the contributors emphasize the role played by social movements and grassroots activists in pressing a human rights agenda from the bottom up.
The essays examine the centrality of human rights in the e
Table of Contents
Preface
—Cynthia Soohoo, Martha F. Davis, and Catherine Albisa
PART I: A HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE UNITED STATES
Introduction to Part I
—Martha F. Davis
Chapter 1. A Human Rights Lens on U.S. History: Human Rights at Home and Human Rights Abroad
—Paul Gordon Lauren
Chapter 2. FDR's Four Freedoms and Wartime Transformations in America's Discourse of Rights
—Elizabeth Borgwardt
Chapter 3. A "Hollow Mockery": African Americans, White Supremacy, and the Development of Human Rights in the United States
—Carol Anderson
Chapter 4. "New" Human Rights? U.S. Ambivalence Toward the International Economic and Social Rights Framework
—Hope Lewis
PART II: FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO HUMAN RIGHTS
Introduction to Part II
—Catherine Albisa
Chapter 5. Against American Supremacy: Rebuilding Human Rights Culture in the United States
—Dorothy Q. Thomas
Chapter 6. Economic and Social Rights in the United States: Six Rights, One Promise
—Catherine Albisa
Chapter 7. Human Rights and the Transformation of the "Civil Rights" and "Civil Liberties" Lawyer
—Cynthia Soohoo
Chapter 8. "Going Global": Appeals to International and Regional Human Rights Bodies
—Margaret Huang
Chapter 9. Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: States, Municipalities, and International Human Rights
—Martha F. Davis
Chapter 10. The Impact of September 11 and the Struggle Against Terrorism on the U.S. Domestic Human Rights Movement
—Wendy Patten
Chapter 11. Bush Administration Noncompliance with the Prohibition on Torture and Cruel and Degrading Treatment
—Kathryn Sikkink
Chapter 12. Trade Unions and Human Rights
—Lance Compa
About the Editors and Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
