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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2012
As the Second World War unfolded and became global, intellectuals of various backgrounds turned their minds to the problems of peace. Internal persecution bred external aggression, some believed. States had to be tamed. Such reasoning led the American Law Institute (ALI) to try to draft a globally acceptable bill of rights. Although originating in the USA, the project was essentially a transnational one. The ‘Statement of essential human rights’ became the most elaborate code created up to that point, in both scope and detail. Completed in the early winter of 1944, it was promoted by the Panamanian delegation to the 1945 San Francisco Conference, and used extensively by the UN Commission on Human Rights. Refuting suggestions that human rights originated in the 1970s, the ALI project reveals the great depth of the transnational conversation on human rights during the early 1940s, and even before.
I wish to thank Helge Pharo, Paul Gordon Lauren, Jay Winter, Øyvind Tønnesson, Kjersti Brathagen, Daniel Maul, the editors and three anonymous reviewers, and colleagues at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and the Forum for Contemporary History, University of Oslo.
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