Book Review: Equal and Inalienable Rights: Essays on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law.

Equal and Inalienable Rights: Essays on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Edited by Melanie R. Bueckert & Derek B.M. Ross. Toronto: LexisNexis, 2024. xlii, 458 p. ISBN 9780433533801 (softcover) $145.00.

Reviewed by Emily Da Silva
Head, Research Support (Education, Law, Management, and Social Sciences)
University of Ottawa Library

This collection of essays gathers the contributions of legal scholars who presented papers at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 75 Symposium held at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, in the fall of 2023. The symposium brought together legal scholars, practitioners, and historians from across Canada and the globe to reflect on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and its historical roots, enduring legacy, and contemporary influence on human rights jurisprudence.

The editors, Melanie Bueckert, Legal Research Counsel at the Manitoba Court of Appeal, and Derek B.M. Ross, Executive Director & General Counsel for the Christian Legal Fellowship, have organized the 17 essays into six themes: freedom of religion, individual rights, collective rights, the UDHR’s global impact, judicial reasoning and human rights, and historical and contemporary perspectives. Common themes include the conceptualization of human dignity in human rights law, the tension between individual and collective or social rights, and the relevance of the historical and political context of the UDHR’s drafting to today’s social challenges.

Librarians and information professionals may be particularly interested in UBC law professor Marcus Moore’s “Freedom of Thought and the Information Revolution.” Moore engages with contemporary threats to freedom of thought related to information provision and restriction (think propaganda, indoctrination, and censorship). The right of freedom of thought is often subsumed under related rights, such as freedom of religion and expression. Moore calls for a positive rights approach to give meaningful content to the right of freedom of thought, independent of those other rights. Moore argues that fleshing out the content of freedom of thought can support balancing protections for conflicting individual freedoms, and he points to social and technological contexts in which an information recipient’s freedom of thought is often at odds with an information provider’s freedom of expression.

Those with a historical bent will appreciate the respective contributions of McGill Librarian Emeritus A.J. Hobbins and the Philos Project’s Senior Research Fellow Habib C. Malik. In “The First Draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Hobbins outlines the contributions of Canadian lawyer John Peters Humphrey to the UDHR. In Malik’s “The Human Rights Challenge for Our Times: Charles Malik and the Universal Declaration at 75,” he recounts his father’s critical contributions to the final draft and negotiations leading up to the UN General Assembly vote to approve the declaration in December 1948, most notably the inclusion of “inherent dignity” and “inalienable rights” in the Preamble.

The editors tackle the challenge of synthesizing the diversity of perspectives represented at the symposium admirably by organizing them into cohesive themes, presenting these in a logical sequence, and drawing together the common threads in their introduction. Exploring these thematic connections in even greater depth would help readers identify further linkages between seemingly disparate contributions. Most essays deal primarily with Canadian perspectives and jurisprudence. Reframing a selection of these essays as a more focused analysis of the UDHR’s influence on Canadian constitutional and human rights law could have allowed a deeper exploration of the interconnection between the UDHR and the Canadian legal context.

This volume addresses a variety of themes central to contemporary human rights discourse, makes the case for further analysis in under-theorized areas of human rights scholarship, and raises important questions about the continuing legacy of the UDHR. It will be of interest chiefly to researchers in the areas of human rights law and Canadian constitutional law, as well as courthouse and academic library collections.