Breaking new ground in the intellectual history of economic and social human rights, Christian Olaf Christiansen traces their justification from the outset of World War II until the present day. Featuring a series of fascinating thinkers, from political scientists to Popes, this is the first book to comprehensively map the key arguments made in defense of human rights and how they connect to ideas of social and redistributive justice. Christiansen traces this intellectual history from a first phase devoted to internationalizing these rights, a second phase of their unprecedented legitimacy deployed to criticize global inequality, to a third phase of a continued quest to secure their legitimacy once and for all. Engaging with the newest scholarship and building a bridge to political philosophy as well as global inequality studies, it facilitates a much-needed novel and nuanced history of rights-rights we should still consider defending today.

‘Christiansen provides an original and insightful account of the vicissitudes of efforts to ensure that economic and social rights have been taken seriously within the international human rights. He sheds valuable new light on the vital role of Global South actors in those endeavours.'

Philip Alston - NYU

‘Weaving together diverse stories of how differently situated human rights advocates contested global inequality, this book provides a rich tapestry of how rights frameworks have been mobilised and imagined. In our contemporary moment, characterised by obscene levels of global inequality and ecological crisis, this intellectual history contains important resources for working towards redistributive justice.'

Julia Dehm - La Trobe Law School

‘Christian Christiansen's far-reaching study represents a major revision to human rights history and points the way toward a new vision for how economic and social rights might still be reclaimed in the struggle to more equitably share what he beautifully describes as the cumulative fruits of humanity's progress.'

Mark Goodale - author of Reinventing Human Rights

‘Christian Olaf Christiansen has provided scholars with a new road map for the global intellectual history of human rights and given a timely reminder of the ways in which modern human rights emerged as a criticism of material inequality and poverty. The book´s insights into global intellectual histories of topics including distributive justice, limitarianism, and solidarity, offer lessons for today´s unequal world.'

Julia McClure - University of Glasgow

‘Comprehensive, enlightening, nuanced. Christiansen makes a powerful and persuasive case: Ideas matter. Human rights matter. The UN's efforts to defend economic and social rights matter.'

Thomas G. Weiss - The CUNY Graduate Center