INTRODUCTION

In the Oval Office of the Obama White House was a carpet of the president’s own design. Inspirational quotations circled its perimeter, including one from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” In January 2017, Donald Trump promptly had the carpet removed.[1]

It was well he did.

There is a pattern here. The Trump administration was marked by a wholesale retreat from all responsibility: personal and presidential, foreign and domestic. The federal government withdrew protections from its most vulnerable citizens and actively moved to disenfranchise many more. Its foreign policy amounted to a refutation of all international obligations. Having led the world in the promulgation of human rights for seventy-five years, the United States walked off the stage. The vacuum was quickly noticed. The governments of Russia, China, Turkey, and others acted swiftly to consolidate their power, moving against minority groups and political opponents that had long sought refuge from the United States.

Not since the Second World War had the cause of human rights reached such a nadir. It therefore became the imperative and urgent task of the next administration to craft a new understanding of right and justice for the next century, with a commitment to the United States’ reengagement with the world. If nothing else, the four Trump years cogently demonstrated the folly of isolationism; however, there is also a danger of overcorrection. Neoconservatives hark back to the Cold War presidencies of Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan for inspiration, when America was a “city on a hill” shining its democratic beacon around the world. But after Trump, any attempt to blithely reassume the mantle of moral supremacy would be met with ridicule. The United States must earn its allies’ trust. This can only be done through good faith and commitment to a clearly articulated vision of the world we seek to create.

To some extent, the rebuilding has already begun. Joe Biden came to the presidency with as comprehensive an understanding of world affairs as any president in history, combined with a genuine commitment to human rights. This commitment, we may assume, springs in part from his Catholic upbringing—which taught him the value of every living soul—and from the innate decency of the man himself. Through word and action, President Biden demonstrated his core belief that every person is deserving of equal rights under the law; he also believes that the United States must hold other nations to account for their abuses. In a New York Times interview prior to the election, he declared unwaveringly, “When I am president, human rights will be at the core of US foreign policy.”

While that task may be great, President Biden has advantages—some more apparent than others. Trump’s appalling record on human rights had one unintended benefit.

The expression of that hope, the very idea of progress, is rooted in a profound faith in natural rights. At rallies, vigils, and marches throughout the United States, protestors articulated an ancient truth transcending class and race: no one should fear the state that protects them. But why should that be so? On what basis do we claim a “right” or demand that the state honor it? The answer, not coincidentally, also provides the path for American reengagement on human rights.

Imagine the law as a great game board with each individual moving along a preset course. These courses constantly overlap, and when they do the game provides exact rules for what happens next. But who sets these rules? Do they need to be fair? And what’s the point of the game anyway?

Consider: if the state sets the rules, it also decides what “fair” means.

That is natural law. Today natural law serves as the foundation of most legal systems, international law, and human rights. Yet there has been little attempt to examine its interrelationship with statecraft; for most scholars it remains a charming philosophical concept quaintly removed from the hurly-burly of actual governance. This is a dangerous misapprehension. Natural law is vital in both senses of the word: necessary, and very much alive. It is no less relevant today than in Marcus Tullius Cicero’s time; in fact, we need it more than ever. But like a great edifice forgotten in the midst of an even larger city, other structures have grown up around it and obscured its presence. Part of this book’s purpose is thus archaeological: brushing aside the weeds and revealing the beauty of the structure within.

The larger project, however, is to determine when and how we stumbled from the path toward universal right under natural law and, more importantly, how to return. Return we must, for natural law is preconditioned on a progressive view of human development. An objective, absolute law is the yardstick by which humanity measures its own progress. In an earlier era this was termed “civilization,” a concept freighted with imperial connotations and disastrous results. But at its core natural law is neither Western nor imperial: it speaks to the best within us through its claim that all humans, regardless of birth or culture, are imbued with an impulse toward justice.

It is all very well to speak in general terms of “natural law,” but what is this law or laws? How do we know it when we see it? When Thomas Jefferson declared that the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were “self-evident,” he was indulging in a charming bit of Enlightenment obfuscation. In truth there is scarcely anything less self-evident than natural right, as evidenced by the many centuries of debate over its existence and character—a debate that is not ended by any means.

Approaching this subject from a twenty-first-century perspective, as I did when I first encountered it, is rather like walking into a theological disputation among acolytes of a complex and arcane religion. It is all too easy for a novitiate to become lost in the lacunae of positivism versus originalism, universalism versus relativism, and so on. Indeed, the sheer weight of scholarship on natural law makes Jefferson’s assertion of self-evidence almost laughable. Nineteenth-century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, for one, did laugh: he described the whole idea as “simple nonsense, rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts.”[3] To the utilitarian mind, the concept of a perfect, divine law awaiting human discovery like some lost temple in the wilderness smacked of religious superstition, or worse. Moreover, even if we accept the existence of natural rights, we are still left with two paramount questions that have plagued scholars for centuries: where do these rights come from and what exactly are they?

As to the first, natural law was predicated from antiquity to the Renaissance on the concurrent existence of a benevolent deity.

As to the exact nature of these rights, Jefferson’s list reflects a general consensus. Sir Edward Coke, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Samuel von Pufendorf, William Blackstone, and the Marquis de Lafayette all endorsed the quartet of life, liberty, security, and property. You may well ask, why these rights in particular? Why not speech, or religion, or voting, or privacy? Before embarking on the story of natural law, it is vital to remain grounded in its essential tenets. Let us clear away, for the present, all scholastic debate and consider instead the moment when we take ownership of our rights, which is at birth. As we lie naked before the world, what do we possess? This is another way of asking what we have been “endowed” with, what is innate to us. These possessions did not come via any human agency, and therefore we exert a claim over them independent from the community. This is the basis for the idea of a “right”—something that is ours and no one else’s and therefore meriting protection. So what are these possessions, or rights?

First, we have our life. It is uniquely our own; it can be sacrificed but not transferred, taken but not appropriated. This sounds like a grand statement of the obvious, until one considers how few of our possessions contain that immutable quality. The “gift of life” came not from the community but from nature, however one wishes to define the concept. As we are endowed with it, and it is wholly and intractably ours, we must have the right to defend it.

Second, we have our will. This may not matter much to a three-minute-old infant, yet tucked away inside its brain are millions of neurons busily firing and making choices—choices that become increasingly complex as we mature. As with our lives, our wills cannot be transferred to another. We can be compelled to act contrary to our inclination, but we cannot be compelled to think the opposite of what we know to be true. As the saying goes, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” Nor, obviously, can we lend our will or transfer it. The ability to make choices is understood as the essence of liberty.

Third, we have a body. At the risk of redundancy, it must be stated that this too is ours and no one else’s. We can give someone a lock of hair, or even a kidney, but these are merely pieces of the whole, which is not itself transferable. It is uniquely ours in precisely the same way as our lives and wills. If it is ours, then we must have the right to protect it from harm. This forms the basis of the third pillar, security.

But what of property? No child has ever come into this world clad in a three-piece suit clutching a stock portfolio.[6] How can we claim ownership of things external to ourselves and therefore mutable and transferable? The simplest answer is that the tools with which we are born are not sufficient to keep us alive. We require food and shelter, clothes and medicines. If they are elemental to our survival they must therefore fall under the “right to life” provision outlined earlier. But what about an iPhone, or a winter home in Palm Beach? What “right” do we have to things that aid our comfort but not survival? This question clearly bothered Jefferson, who shied away from defining property as an essential right and opted for the pleasanter if vague “pursuit of happiness” instead.

An interesting if somewhat circumlocutory answer comes to us by way of William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in 1765. “The right of personal security,” he writes, “consists in a person’s legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health, and his reputation.”[7] Life and limb, certainly, but reputation? Yet Blackstone’s logic is sound. As with the rest, a person’s reputation is a possession that can be owned but never transferred. Just as someone can injure your body or take your life, they can do irreparable damage to your honor. Iago tells Othello:

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls: Who steals my purse steals trash; �?tis something, nothing; �?Twas mine, �?tis his, and has been slave to thousands: But he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed. (Othello, Act III, Scene III)

Reputation is not contained within the body yet nevertheless is tethered to it. Any harm to it radiates to ourselves, like signals along a wire. From this connection it is possible to imagine a similar relationship with other possessions; they are all, in a sense, extensions of ourselves. Therefore the law understands theft, arson, damage, and vandalism as “injuries” done to those things that radiate out from each of us. In this materialistic age we move about like tiny planets ringed with the innumerable satellites of our acquisitions, which collide and trespass over one another and keep generations of corporate attorneys very busy indeed.

Life, liberty, security, and property are grand and vague concepts. Each can be narrowly or broadly defined, as one wishes. “Liberty,” for example, has become a catchall phrase for everything from political participation to—in its most extreme form—resistance to any kind of legal restraint. Liberties are often confused with privileges, which are themselves more closely related to property. Property too is quicksilver. How total is our dominion over our possessions? Can we kill someone for attempting to steal them or for trespassing upon them?

These complexities are only the beginning of the debate. As the centuries progressed, new understandings of rights competed with, convoluted, and in some cases consumed natural law. Nineteenth-century revolution and reform led to a new category of “positive” rights, which now form the backbone of a non-Western critique of “negative” natural ones. Nor can the impact of politics be ignored. Even as delegates met in San Francisco in 1948 to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a formidable challenge arose in the twin cataclysms of Cold War and decolonization. Manichaean global politics dictated that human rights be conflated with Western liberalism and democracy, contrasted with the alleged “barbarity” of the Soviet Union, and sold wholesale by the United States and its allies. Conversely the Soviets, by rejecting Western democratic values, went a long way toward rejecting all human rights as well. Decolonization—or rather the legacy of several centuries’ colonization—wove like a caduceus within this conflict. Long-nourished resentment against imperial oppressors flared into open rejection of “Western imperialist” notions of justice and right. The Soviet Union is gone and the colonies long since freed, yet these resentments and political divisions remain intact.

Even if legitimate questions may be raised about the United States’ Western-centric concept of human rights, its development has been a core principle of American foreign policy since the Roosevelt administration. Divergences broke along party lines: broadly speaking, Republican presidents favored a limited concept of right analogous to political freedom, while Democratic ones favored a more holistic model embracing social as well as political rights. Universally acknowledged, however, was the pivotal role and responsibility of the United States in fostering rights around the world. That acknowledgment came to a halt in 2017. President Trump and his advisers sneered at “theological” attachment to principles. A profile of former National Security Adviser John Bolton in the Atlantic illustrates this philosophy:

Bolton’s return to power has allowed him to pursue his great passions in life, which are outmaneuvering his adversaries, foreign and domestic, and getting America out of treaties. (“So many bad deals to kill,” Bolton once wrote, “so little time.”)…He said that America has slowly constrained its range of action, through foolhardy entanglements with international institutions such as the United Nations.[8]

President Trump initially focused on undoing his predecessor’s legacy, withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris Agreement, and the Iran nuclear pact. Emboldened, and with a nativist’s deep suspicion of foreign “entanglements,” he began to sever as many international cords as he could reach. Here, as with much else, the president’s motives ranged from vindictive to reactionary to genuinely cruel. Others were merely incomprehensible. Piqued by other nations’ refusal to laud his diplomatic genius, Donald Trump struck at the very pillars of the global order, blustering about withdrawing from the World Trade Organization and NATO or threatening to revoke the lease on the United Nations building.

Less widely reported, but no less disquieting, were the actual withdrawals from UNESCO and the UN Human Rights Council—the latter announced the day after the UN high commissioner denounced the forced removal of migrant children from their parents at the US border. Concurrently, the State Department received new protocols making asylum more difficult than at any time since before the Second World War, when Breckinridge Long crafted “a paper trail from here to Berlin” to block Jewish refugees. Even those unmoved by such policies could not fail to be shaken by the president’s personal diplomacy. Beyond disparaging allies and cosseting enemies, Trump displayed a frightening indifference to and even affinity for human rights abuses. At various points in his presidency he staunchly defended atrocities and acts of political violence by the governments of Russia, North Korea, China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, and the Philippines. Often there seemed in the president a genuine wistfulness that he could not deal in like fashion with his enemies.

American presidents have been faulted for not doing enough for human rights, but Donald Trump stands alone in wishing their negation. A perfect corollary to his efforts abroad was the creation of a working group at home, euphemistically titled the “Commission on Unalienable Rights,” whose stated goal was to distinguish “genuine” rights from “ad hoc rights created by politicians and bureaucrats.” Most commentators believed the goal was to so weaken the definition as to make it unenforceable, freeing the United States from any obligation to intervene or even object to human rights abuses. Fortunately, as with many of the president’s half-baked notions, it came to nothing.

Taken in sum, the policy of the Trump administration on human rights combined a quixotic attempt to barricade the United States from the world (in some aspects literally) with a cynical dereliction of American responsibility. The first year of the Biden presidency was mostly triage: assessing the nature of the wounds, the depth of their severity, and applying emergency treatment. Now we have reached a watershed moment where this administration, and this nation, can begin to articulate a new and lasting vision of human rights. The auspices are favorable: the president is enthusiastic and committed, the global community is mainly receptive, and there is no overarching conflict monopolizing our foreign policy. But there are dangers as well. Our allies still regard us warily, wondering whether the isolationist policies of the Trump years will return again—possibly in the unlovely form of Donald Trump himself. It has been some years since the United States made a declarative act defending human rights abroad, beyond the usual boilerplate. Even under President Obama, offending nations learned to expect little more than a strongly worded note—the infamous “red line” on Syrian atrocity being an obvious case in point. It is easy enough to call for a return to universalism or fantasize about a utopia where all rights are enjoyed by all. But the path toward that goal requires mindfulness of past missteps and a commitment to a permanent set of values that transcends any one political party or administration. Specifically, this book will advance three propositions:

1. In order to progress beyond stale debate, the United States must decouple itself from a Western democratic understanding of human rights.

In some ways the modern conception of human rights is frozen in amber, trapped in the ideological and political conflicts of the last century. The struggle with Nazism established clear fault lines: “fascism” and “democracy” were not simply contrasting political ideologies but umbrella terms covering every kind of law and value. Human rights, rejected wholesale by the Nazis, came to be associated with democratic states and ultimately democracy itself. This trend was reinforced during the Cold War, when communism replaced fascism as ideological foil and “freedom” became synonymous with right. Political freedoms in particular were given pride of place in a global discourse led by the United States, codified in such documents as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Thus the term “freedom” was transformed: defined for centuries as personal liberty, it now came to include and necessitate full participation in democratic government.

This idea, now decades old, is cancerous. Conflating basic rights with liberal democracy perpetuates the falsehood that only certain forms of government are conducive to rule of law, or that democracy is a necessary precursor to the establishment of human rights. Worse yet, it reinforces the counterargument that human rights are a tool of neoimperialism among Western powers, negating the power of the rights themselves. And so the old arguments get rehashed again and again, in the United Nations, in G-8 summits, even apparently in the Methodist Church.

Disentangling basic human rights from Western democratic values is no easy task. When Franklin Roosevelt ordered his State Department to draft the first international bill of rights in 1940, the results were as predictable as they were disappointing. Despite being international in scope, no non-Western sources were consulted or employed, and the final product was nearly indistinguishable from the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution. The delegation that drafted the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights was certainly more multiethnic, yet it met in San Francisco under the aegis of American encouragement and very much in the shadow of the late President Roosevelt (Eleanor Roosevelt served for a time as chair). The declaration similarly adopted language drawn verbatim from both Western and specifically American sources: FDR’s Four Freedoms speech, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution.

Just as problematic as definition are issues of enforcement. America’s role as global policeman, a legacy of the Cold War, has placed it in the invidious position of choosing which rights to preference. Again not surprisingly, political rights take precedence. Moreover, uneven enforcement (often predicated on whims and political inclinations of each president) means that there are few absolutes: neither allies nor hostile nations know which infractions cross the nebulous “red line”—largely because we don’t know ourselves. Definition and enforcement are interwoven with realpolitik calculations, meaning that ultimately the United States chooses to enforce those rights abroad that are most convenient or politically advantageous at home. One does not need to be a cynic to doubt Ronald Reagan’s vision of the “shining city on a hill” under these circumstances. Indeed, as Samantha Power argues, decades of ad hoc enforcement and bad faith have so eroded America’s voice on issues of human rights that we have devolved back to pre-1945 conditions, where state malefactors act with impunity and no fear of legal repercussions.[9]

Ironically, the Trump administration’s abandonment of human rights gave other voices an opportunity to emerge. After the United States exited the stage, other nations—South Africa, Canada, Botswana, Germany, Taiwan, Jordan, Bhutan, France, Argentina, the UK, and many more—came forward. This is not to suggest that the rest of the world suddenly discovered natural law when Trump abandoned it. International law is a conversation dominated for decades by a small coterie of speakers, most especially the United States. With that voice effectively silent, others could at last be heard. As the conversation continues it transforms, which we must recognize as we reenter it. A suddenly reengaged United States trumpeting about democratic values and “West vs. the rest” will sound, in effect, like a crusty Cold Warrior in a very different century.

For our voice to be heard, we cannot speak as the presumptive moral arbiter of the world—a title we might perhaps have enjoyed in 1945 but not for very long and certainly not today. The waning light of Wilson’s “moral diplomacy” was extinguished entirely by Donald Trump; any human rights policy that predicates itself on American exceptionalism—however idealistic or well intentioned—will be treated with scorn by our allies and indifference by others. However, if we address the global community not as hegemon or even primus inter pares but rather one among equals, we can ultimately exert greater influence than ever before. A modest, ecumenical approach encourages trust and allows us to avoid the accusation of neoimperialism. This means abandoning the much-cherished idea that “human rights are American rights” and arguing instead for international coalition and covenant. Thus do our perceived weaknesses become strengths.

On the other hand, modesty must not be mistaken for timidity. Willingness to seek coalition may be misinterpreted as a sign of diminished authority, encouraging endless debate and perpetuating the very tropes of cultural relativism that we seek to abolish. For this reason, the United States must be clear and absolute in its own definition of fundamental rights and its willingness to enforce them. This brings us to the second proposition:

2. The United States and other nations must distinguish between fundamental rights based on natural law and other rights.

In a 2002 study, Upendra Baxi examined the problem of “too many rights”: an oxymoron on the face of it, like too much of a good thing, but not so. Consider the Universal Declaration of Human Rights discussed earlier. The declaration has thirty articles and no key describing their order of importance. Is right to life of equal importance to right to leisure? Are safe working conditions and political participation to be given the same weight? What happens when two or more “fundamental” rights conflict? The declaration has been described as an aspirational document designed more to encourage than direct; it is not, strictly speaking, law. Not a single nation was in compliance with all its provisions in 1948 and none is today. Yet even as a guideline it has serious flaws. Moreover, for all the decades of subsequent legislation and covenant, there are still no recognized categories of rights in international law, no prioritization—in effect, only a list.

The problem with too many rights is that, given the impossibility of honoring them all, states select which to prioritize. China, for example, argues that ensuring the right to adequate standards of living for its citizens necessitates sacrificing some personal liberties. This argument may have merit, but it is a slippery slope: if individual states and governments choose which rights to follow, ultimately there are no “fundamental” rights at all, and the very concept becomes analogous with subjective state policy. For cultural relativists this is both inevitable and correct. Why should we presume the international community knows more about the rights and needs of a people than that people’s own leaders? The answer, of course, is that if this argument is taken to its logical conclusion, law becomes the will of the state and the very concept of right disappears.

Too many rights also leads to confusion, frustration, and cynicism for those states and organizations trying to uphold them. Consider this: at one time in mid-nineteenth-century America, temperance, postal reform, and a dozen other causes competed alongside abolitionism, feminism, and social welfare for the attention of would-be reformers. Those passionate about blue laws or banning mail delivery on Sundays believed their cause was no less righteous or necessary than abolishing slavery. Many reformers, indeed, espoused multiple campaigns at the same time. Yet this diffuseness of focus worked against their intent, slowing progress and spreading the movement too thin.

Very much the same problem exists today in human rights. While individual NGOs may direct their attention on specific rights abuses, governments often have broader, vaguer understandings of when to object or intervene. No one would seriously suggest military intervention to ensure that a state provided paid vacations for its citizens, yet there is little guidance on the difference between this right (Article 24 of the Human Rights Declaration) and the right to life (Article 3). Far from establishing priorities, human rights proponents seem determined to move in the opposite direction. The 1993 World Conference on Human Rights declared that “all human rights are universal, indivisible, and interdependent and interrelated,” a statement that sounds grand but, with reflection, becomes nonsense. Which rights, whose rights, and what happens when they conflict? How exactly is Article 27 (the right to copyright one’s own work) inextricably linked to Article 16 (the right to marry)? Compounding this inanity, the conference blithely concluded: “The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis.”[10] Right.

There are, of course, certain things a government may do that constitute crimes: the International Criminal Court holds jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes against peace. But prosecuting a crime is not the same as upholding a right. Does a state have to commit mass murder in order to provoke other states to protect the rights of its citizens? Conversely, adherence to basic human rights becomes increasingly untenable when they are lumped indiscriminately alongside the whole. As Peter Stearns writes, “Groups wary of basic rights definitions may balk further when they realize the list may prove inexhaustible…. Societies favorable to a basic rights list, at least after some period of habituation, will inevitably splinter anew when new rights are claimed.”[11]

There is a pressing need for clarity on the difference between fundamental and secondary rights. Yet the answer is already self-evident. Fundamental rights are those which no state may deny its citizens; secondary rights are those which are important yet aspirational—goals rather than foundations. But how can we distinguish between the two? Moreover, even if the United States were to do so, why should any other state accept its distinctions?

The answer lies in promulgating a list of fundamental rights that are not purely American, or even Western. This is natural law. Since antiquity, scholars have identified four principal rights under the law of nature: life, liberty, security, and property. This short, powerful list transcends ethnicity, border, status, and time. Indeed it is difficult to find any society whose laws do not reflect an acknowledgment. Yet it is all too easy to bring to mind examples past and present when a state has denied each or all to its citizens. A narrowed focus on these fundamental rights will allow the United States to argue for baseline compliance and rally the community of nations to prevent, halt, or adjudicate abuses.

This is not to suggest that we should abandon all other rights that fall outside the narrow boundaries of the “big four.” We must and should continue to press for the enlargement of rights around the world through all the channels available to us: economic, political, and even personal. What this does mean, however, is prioritizing some rights above others. Build the foundation, in other words, before the ceiling. The core of US policy on human rights must be a commitment to upholding natural law rights within its borders and using every means available to compel other nations to do the same. Hence the third and final proposition:

3. The United States and other nations must pledge to absolutely enforce natural law rights.

“Speak softly and carry a big stick.” The advice of Teddy Roosevelt’s apocryphal tribesman has never been more relevant than today, as for decades the United States has done precisely the opposite. Diplomatic protest in the wake of an atrocity has become synonymous with “thoughts and prayers” after a mass shooting, and just as cynical. Yet imagine for a moment if the reverse were true. Imagine the United States reentering the conversation in a post-Trump world modestly, abandoning its eagle-screeching rhetoric for a gentler approach. The great advantage to natural law is that even if one disagrees with its philosophical foundations, it is well-nigh impossible to deny the necessity of the four basic rights it espouses. Encouraging international comity on these rights places the United States as one among equals. Yet it also recognizes America’s unique potential to bring the full weight of its political, economic, and military pressure to bear on recalcitrant states.

There are several ways to encourage or ultimately compel a state to obey international law. At the easier end of the spectrum are rhetorical tools like shaming, bringing notice, or international condemnation. Then come economic sanctions, either partial or total. Finally, in the case of the most grievous abuses, military intervention. The United States must commit to employing any and all of these measures. In practice, this means a recognition that the law supersedes all other international or commercial agreements. We cannot continue to trade with a nation that tortures its citizens, even if that trade is beneficial to our own economy. We must not shirk from calling out a state for abusive practices, even if it is an ally. Finally, crucially, we must be willing to use military force to stop the most flagrant abuses of natural law. This does not mean assuming (or reassuming) the mantle of world policeman. As one partner among many, the US would naturally encourage international response to human rights abuses. But a willingness to act unilaterally, even against our own self-interest, sends a clear and powerful message to the rest of the world.

There is nothing radical in this. All state law is composed of three elements: edict, enforcement, and consequence. The edict must be supported by sufficient force to ensure compliance as well as the certainty of punishment for failure to do so. Thus the law acts primarily as a deterrent. But international law falls short of this tripartite structure, having only the code. There is scant motive for compliance and no effective deterrent from abuse. By pledging to uphold a set of narrowly defined fundamental rights around the world, the United States will add the final two elements. This was precisely what Franklin Roosevelt intended in his plan for the United Nations, and indeed what early secretaries general saw as its ultimate aim. Recommitting the United States to upholding natural law merely resets the clock to 1945, revivifying not only the central mission of the United Nations but the United States’ role within that organization as well.

If this vision still seems utopian, it should. The momentous task of resuming the upward path of natural law begins with a recommitment to the idea of an upward path itself. The locus is not within governments but within the individual mind. Hence the purpose of this book is to introduce the reader to a different way of thinking about the law and their relationship with it, one that is both profoundly arduous yet hopeful as well.

With that in mind, let us begin.