Fundamental Rights and Conflicts among Rights

How far have we come putting into practice what was declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which this year marks its 70th anniversary? How can the Church respond today to the new challenges threatening these rights, whether relativism, fundamentalism, and persecution or new types of poverty and oppression? And with whom can the Church engage on these issues? With states, religious leaders, international institutions, cultural institutions, or first and foremost with global civil society? In addition, what are the roots of fundamental rights, and what response can there be to the danger of a multiplication of rights that can paradoxically threaten concepts on the rule of law and human dignity? These are the fundamental questions addressed and debated by the experts whose essays appear in this book.

Fundamental Rights and Conflicts among Rights is divided into four parts: Genesis and Meaning of the Idea of Religious Liberty, Laicité and Natural Law, Birth and Transformation of the Culture of Liberty and Human Rights, and the Multiplication of Rights and the Risk of Destruction of the Idea of Right. Throughout the volume, prestigious international experts analyze these issues. Among them are Giuseppe Dalla Torre (Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta), Jean Louis Ska (Pontificio Istituto Biblico), Robert P. George (Princeton University), Marta Cartabia (vice president of the Italian Constitutional Court), Carlos Ignacio Massini (Mendoza, Argentina), Barbara Zehnpfennig (Universität Passau), Mary Ann Glendon (Harvard University), Joseph H. Weiler (New York University), and Roberto Baratta (Macerata, Italia). The volume also contains an essay by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, secretary of state, on “The Church's Interlocutors in the Debate and in the Affirmation of Human Rights.”