In 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which declared that every human being, without "distinction of any kind," possesses a set of morally authoritative rights and fundamental freedoms that ought to be socially guaranteed. Since that time, human rights have arguably become the cross-cultural moral concept and evaluative tool to measure the performance--and even legitimacy--of domestic regimes. Yet questions remain that challenge their universal validity and theoretical bases.

Some theorists are "maximalist" in their...