Demanding Human Rights: A Change in the World Legal Order

President Carter's recognition of universal standards of human rights, and his formulation of a foreign policy at least partially based on such recognition, has been the object of both foreign and domestic criticism, which at first glance'appears inexplicably severe. In the context of the present world legal order, however, the administration's expressed intention to pursue a policy directed toward a worldwide guarantee of human rights represents a potentially radical departure from the legal tenets which have governed world political interaction for the last 300 years.