John Warwick Montgomery on Human Rights

* A handout I created for a discussion on "rights."  The formatting is not the greatest given this blog format.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)—Analysis from John Warwick Montgomery Human Rights and Human Dignity (Dallas, Texas: Probe Books, 1986), 26-29.

1st Generation Rights	2nd Generation Rights	3rd Generation Rights
Liberte’	E’galite’	Fraternite’
Civil and political freedoms “Citizens of the United States are particularly well-acquainted with ‘first generation’ human rights, for they are given constitutional status in the first ten amendments to the Federal Constitution … These ‘civil liberties,’ as they are generally termed on the national or domestic level, are extensively incorporated into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Articles 2-21…”	Economic, social, and cultural rights “Underlying them is the concept of social equality.  They take their modern origin particularly from the socialist traditions of the early nineteenth century (what Engels called ‘utopian socialism, an infantile disorder’) and from the Marxian socialism of the latter part of the same century.  Articles 22-27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights catalog many of these rights: the right to work, to rest, and to leisure (paid holidays), and the right to social security, to education, and to the protection of one’s inventions and literary achievements.”	Solidarity rights “These rights are an expanding category which at least include national self-determination, the right to economic and social development, the right to benefit from the ‘common heritage of mankind’ (sharing of the earth’s resources and wealth—as embodied in the recent United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty), the right to a healthy environment, the right to peace, and the right to humanitarian disaster relief.”
UDHR articles 2-24	UDHR articles 22-27	UDHR article 28
Negative right “…(freedom from the abuse and misuse of political authority).  Indeed, these rights epitomize the Western liberal-political ideal of individual freedom over against the encroaching power of the state.”	Positive rights “These second-generation rights are often regarded as more positive than negative in nature, not in the sense of their having a higher value, but in that their realization is difficult (in some cases virtually impossible) without affirmative state action.  The they entail a more positive role for the state and have been especially emphasized (at least in theory) by Eastern-bloc nations.”	Positive rights Note: J. W Montgomery does not specify that 3rd generation rights are more positive in nature but from the concepts listed above they would seem to fit more on the positive right end of things.
First world—USA	Socially oriented collectivistic East	Developing Third world and Marxist states
Greatest legal sanctions behind them	Somewhere in between 1st and 3rd generation rights in terms of enforceability	Relatively little enforceability