In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

MARY CLAVEAU MALZKUHN y first personal encounter with human rights issues occurred at a residential school when I was ten or eleven years old. After being told that my dormitory mates and 1could not go to a movie because we went "too often" (every Saturday certainly did not seem too often to us), I was sufficiently provoked to lead a strike at the school. This sense of outrage over injustices of any kind has remained with me all these years, an attitude that may help explain why I have always been such a staunch supporter of human rights causes. I would trace my intellectual interest in human rights to my coursework under Richard Pierre Claude at the UniverSity of Maryland. Claude not only teaches Constitutional Law and the historical development of the human rights concept, but also acts as a strong advocate of many human rights issues. Upon becoming my advisor, mentor, and friend (not necessarily in that order), Richard inspired in me an intense interest in and commitment to various human rights causes. I have continued to work in this area, looking primarily at the relationship between human rights and the concerns of Deaf people worldwide. What are human rights? Maurice Cranston (1973) writes that this label was coined in the twentieth century to refer to what people in other centuries have called "natural rights" or the "rights of man." Although definitions of this term are frequently ambiguous , I believe we can safely say that human rights are those we have simply because we are humans, whether or not specific governments have encoded them into the national or local legal system. There is no simple way to anticipate which human problems can best be resolved by invoking the human rights concept. The United States Supreme Court, however, has frequently referred to human rights in justifying its decisions, particularly when no specific precedent could be found in either the United States Constitution or in subsequent court rulings. Examples would be decisions regarding the right to use birth control and the right of people of different races to marry. Another example of a court decision based on the concept of human rights comes from Israel. In 1962, Adolph Eichmann, a leading figure in the Nazi's efforts to exterminate Jews during World War II, was tried in Israel for his crimes. Holder has summarized this case as follows: At the time he committed his atrocities, there was no state of Israel and consequently no Israeli law. There is a principle of criminal law in all parts of the civilized world that a man should not be tried for something not specificaIIy prohibited by a statute in force at the time he did it. In the Eichmann case, however , there was a consensus among legal experts that natural law and civilized The Human Rights of the Deaf behavior prohibit the extermination of millions of people, and so Eichmann was tried, convicted, and executed under natural law. (1990) Where did the notion of human rights come from? Thomas Jefferson, in writing the Declaration of Independence, borrowed the term "inalienable rights" from the seventeenth century English philosopher, John Locke. The roots of this philosophy go back to ancient times. It probably began at least as early as when Aristotle first expounded the concept of "absolute justice." Aristotle believed that natural law arose from man's ability to reason and, hence, to determine what justice should mean and to help bring it about (Sahakin, 1968, p. 76). In the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas modified Aristotle's concept by adding the concept that God, rather than simply man's reason, is the source of this natural law. Aquinas defmed natural law as part of the divine will of God, which could be discovered through man's use of the natural power of reason. Aquinas also believed that natural law ideally plays a role in the establishment of governments to meet the needs of mankind. If the state makes laws that contravene human rights, these laws must fall (Sahakin, 1968, p. 104). John Locke agreed with Aquinas about natural law, but he was not so certain that God was its source. To Locke, natural law meant that men, because of their humanity, have certain inalienable rights that should not be taken away by the state or other men. Locke's view was that government should exist only by the consent of the governed. His "Social Contract" theory (Sahakin, 1968, pp. 154-155) holds that government's...

Share