Revisiting the Rights of Man: Georg Jellinek on Rights and the State

Abstract

A century has passed since the publication in Germany of a now famous essay on the rights of man by the Heidelberg professor of public law, Georg Jellinek. Over the course of that century, although a “rights revolution” has undoubtedly taken place, numerous practical problems remain in trying to enforce the basic proposition that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Such problems have led one recent commentator to suggest that perhaps the only meaningful defense of human rights is one based on “moral reciprocity” and secular humanism because any attempts to prioritize human rights on either religious grounds, for example, or that of intrinsic human value, are doomed to failure.