The protections were demanded across regions, and the core is thinner than the objection assumes

The argument

A second argument addresses the claim that the framework encodes one culture. Opponents point out that the drafting and subsequent expansion of rights instruments drew on jurists and delegations from every region, including states that had recently thrown off colonial rule and were insistent on protections against arbitrary power precisely because they had just lived under it. Prohibitions on slavery, torture, arbitrary detention and killing for expression were not conceded reluctantly under outside pressure; they were among the things most firmly demanded. Opponents also argue that the core at issue is thinner than the objection suggests. The protections that attract the charge of imposition most often are the ones hardest to present as culturally particular: do not torture people, do not hold them without charge, do not kill them for what they say, do not own them. No tradition defends these practices in its own description of itself, and the governments that engage in them do not claim a cultural right to do so but deny the facts. Beyond that core, the framework leaves a great deal to local determination and is itself the subject of continuous open argument among its adherents. The conclusion opponents draw is about where the argument gets its force and where it applies. Its plausibility comes from the contested periphery, where questions of family law, property, religious authority and economic policy are genuinely arguable and where reasonable people disagree. Its conclusion is then applied to the core, which is not a cultural preference at all. Separating the two, opponents argue, leaves a real debate about interpretation and no case that the framework as such is imperial.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who disagree answer that participation in drafting is not authorship, since the agenda, the categories and the language were largely settled before most delegations were admitted, and many of those delegations represented states still under tutelage. They add that the appeal to a thin core understates what is enforced in practice, where pressure is applied over family law, religious authority, property and economic policy, none of which is settled by a prohibition on torture.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Participation is not authorship. The agenda, the categories and the drafting language were largely settled before most delegations were admitted, and many represented states still under tutelage. [Rejecting P2] The core is not what is actually enforced. Pressure in practice extends to family law, religious authority, property and economic policy, none of which follows from a prohibition on torture. [Rejecting P3] What is left to local determination is decided by the same bodies that interpret the framework, so the latitude is granted from above rather than reserved from below. [Rejecting C] Conceding that contested applications remain open gives away the argument, since the charge is directed at exactly those applications rather than at the prohibition on torture.