Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

In order to understand the British attitude' towards international organizations designed to protect human rights, one must understand the deeply rooted traditional British view of human rights themselves. One begins this examination of traditional legal philosophy with the influence of Jeremy Bentham in the eighteenth century. Bentham stated, "Look to the letter and you'll find nonsense; look beyond the letter and you'll find nothing. Natural rights is simple nonsense-nonsense upon stilts." A century later, Dicey, the great constitutional lawyer, stated in his seminal work on the study of the law of constitutions that most foreign constitution framers have begun with declarations of rights, and, he concluded, "for this they often have been in no way to blame."

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