The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is often considered to be a part of the “natural law” tradition. This might mean that, whoever drafted the text, they were inspired by the natural law that resides in all of us. Such a claim is not falsifiable using historical methods, and will not be addressed here. It might mean, though, that thinkers and politicians who were demonstrably part of the natural law tradition played a large role in the drafting of the UDHR. This position, which will be contested in this essay, has been defended by numerous historians, most notably Mary Ann Glendon. The evidence shows that the natural law tradition, as it existed between the 1890s and the 1950s, was somewhere between skeptical and antagonistic towards human rights claims. The evidence also shows that natural law thinkers who were in the orbit of the UDHR, most notably Jacques Maritain, were not as influential as Glendon and others have claimed. As a historical matter, therefore, the UDHR is not in any substantive way a part of the natural law tradition. At most, natural law was one among a number of competing traditions that all played a role.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed as a ‘common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations’ and rests on the claim that persons are ‘endowed with reason and conscience’. The drafters were thus aligned with the claims of the natural law tradition that there are timeless principles of morality – true for all people in all places – and that these principles serve as a guide for lawmakers and a standard to evaluate positive law. Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain argued that the drafters did not need to agree on the philosophical or metaphysical foundations of morality in order to agree on formulations of practical principles in the language of universal rights. This key insight helped to overcome obstacles to the UDHR and to guide key drafters including Charles Malik. Maritain’s account of natural law in The Rights of Man and Natural Law highlights the notion of jus gentium: commonly agreed principles that are intermediate between the first principles of natural law and positive law. The UDHR can be understood as a successful attempt to formulate jus gentium principles in the aftermath of a war that had seen them disregarded and violated.

This chapter explores connections among one ‘virtue of acknowledged dependence’, humility, as elaborated by Augustine; the right or just according to nature; and human rights. The opening section argues that in defending virtuous humility, Augustine defends a new account of natural right, supporting this thesis with a reading of The City of God, books I-V. After this analysis, our focus shifts a central framer of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Lebanese philosopher-diplomat Charles Habib Malik. Drawing on the archive of Malik’s papers and on his publications and lectures, we offer a select history of Malik’s study of Augustine’s work and his distinctively Augustinian perspective on themes such as humility, natural right and natural law, and human rights. We turn next to the text of the Universal Declaration, considering its Augustinian affinities as well as key divergences from Augustine’s views. The final sections of the chapter argue that Augustinian notions of humility and pride are central to Malik’s appraisal of the Declaration and the contemporary human rights project more generally, in their substance as well as their modes of expression.

Beginning in the immediate post-WWII moment and carrying on to the present, international law’s Human Rights and Development missions mirror the US Evangelical ethos that emerged and gained traction at a similar pace. Making no causal claims, this Chapter focuses less on the UDHR’s expressions of monotheistic beliefs and more on the actors and ethos that informed those expressions. Specifically, it explores how legal communicative strategies and ideas used by human rights and development champions parallel those deployed at the same time by dominant US Evangelical leaders. The communicative strategies, inter alia, recall the desperate straits of the ‘unsaved’ other, present information as good news (gospel) and as truth, appeal to Messianic notions of history, and offer salvationist promises to transform afflicted lives. And the parallels form some of the many rationalizing forces that can be viewed as an expression of quasi-religious faith in American approaches to social and economic governance, and a call for those approaches to be internationalized. Like the Kingdom of God, this faith must be true for everyone to be true for anyone, and truth knows no borders. In other words, it is international law as evangelism.

This chapter focuses on the author of the first formal philosophical study of human rights in the United States: William Ernest Hocking. This philosophical giant of the twentieth century shaped how Americans understood human rights through his writings and through his work with liberal Protestant institutions. By tracing his philosophical formation, his spats with philosopher John Dewey, his theories of the state, and his influence on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this chapter puts forward two arguments. First, Hocking’s trajectory shows us that American formulations of human rights were intertwined with debates about religious liberty. Second, liberal Protestants like Hocking disassociated human rights from specific references to Christian theology, which constituted a form of secularization. Hocking’s career offers a view onto the meaning of human rights in the twentieth-century United States.