This book has three parts. Part One (Chapters 1–3) is about the morality of human rights; Part Two (Chapters 4–7), about the relation of the morality of human rights to the law of human rights; and Part Three (Chapters 8–9), about the proper role of courts in protecting the law of human rights.

Part One. In Chapter 1, I discuss the morality of human rights, which holds that each and every born human being has inherent dignity and is inviolable. In Chapter 2, I elaborate a religious ground for the morality of human rights. In Chapter 3, I inquire as to whether there is a non-religious ground for the morality of human rights. That there is a religious ground for the morality of human rights – indeed, more than one – is clear. (The eminent philosopher Charles Taylor has argued that the “affirmation of universal human rights” that characterizes “modern liberal political culture” represents an “authentic development[] of the gospel. …”) It is far from clear, however, that there is a non-religious ground – a secular ground – for the morality of human rights. Indeed, the claim that every born human being has inherent dignity and is inviolable is deeply problematic for many secular thinkers, because the claim is difficult – perhaps to the point of being impossible – to align with one of their reigning intellectual convictions – what Bernard Williams called “Nietzsche's thought”: “[T]here is, not only no God, but no metaphysical order of any kind. …”