The framework's content reflects where it was written, and is then presented as universal

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that the catalogue of rights is not neutral between traditions. It places individual liberties at the centre, treats the single person rather than the family, lineage or community as the fundamental unit of moral concern, and in practice gives priority to civil and political entitlements over collective, economic and developmental ones. Proponents often regard these as defensible commitments. Their point is that they are also particular commitments, belonging to a tradition of political thought that developed in one part of the world and became dominant through the power of the states that held it rather than through any process in which others were consulted. What makes this imperial rather than merely parochial, on this account, is the universality claim attached to it. The framework is presented not as one tradition's answer to how authority should be limited but as what every society owes its members, by its nature, everywhere. A society that orders obligations differently, giving weight to collective duties or to religious authority, is then not described as holding a different view but as violating rights. Proponents argue that this move removes the other tradition from the discussion rather than answering it, which is what an imperial relation does to the thought of those it governs. Proponents are usually explicit about what they are not claiming. Few defend torture, arbitrary detention or the subjection of women, and most say so at the outset. The objection is directed at the form: a particular moral tradition, codified by the strongest states and enforced by them, declaring itself the measure against which every other tradition is assessed. That structure, they argue, is the structure of imperialism whether or not the content being carried is admirable.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Opponents reply that where an idea began does not settle whose it is, and that the drafting and expansion of rights instruments involved jurists and delegations from every region, many from states newly independent and insistent on exactly these protections. They add that the charge is advanced most often by governments facing criticism rather than by the people the rights protect, and that treating a complaint about torture or detention as a cultural imposition is of most use to whoever is doing the detaining.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The ordering described is contested within the framework itself, where economic, social and collective rights are long established, so the priority is a feature of how some states invoke rights rather than of the catalogue. [Rejecting P2] One political tradition understates the drafting record, which included jurists and delegations from every region, many insisting on precisely these protections against the powers that had ruled them. [Rejecting P3] Every moral standard reclassifies disagreement as violation; that is what makes it a standard. The premise would equally disqualify the prohibitions on slavery and on conquest. [Rejecting C] Whatever the merits of its content concedes the decisive point. If the content is right, the objection is to who is saying it, which is a complaint about standing rather than a finding of imperialism.