In 1948, the U.N. General Assembly spelled out the rights the United Nations would promote by adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), with the assenting votes of all but eight of the body’s then fifty-eight members. (The Soviet Union, five of its allies, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa abstained, and two countries were absent.) Most international law experts consider the UDHR to have achieved the status of “customary international law,” meaning that it is legally binding on all states, even those that did not vote for it or that did not exist when it was adopted. From this root grew what is today a complex body of international … Continue reading Andrew J. Nathan