In Defence of Human Rights: From the Womb to the Tomb

As the title of the book suggests – In Defence of Human Rights: From the Womb to the Tomb – it investigates fundamental issues of human rights from the womb to the tomb. In this way the book serves as a barometer for the teaching of human rights at all stages of life. This work offers a major new means of conceptualising law and human legal relations across the world. The extensive detail of the book and its coverage of a plethora of aspects of the Bill of Rights jurisprudence and practice have made it a standard reference work for this important area of law. The book highlights the anti-materialistic view that man is composed not only of the body but also of the soul. The question that is raised and has been successfully answered in this work, is, what the relevance of legal theories on individual rights for modern man, will be? The book purports that the soul is immortal and divine in nature and therefore serves as the origin of individual or human rights. Man was created by the special plan and providence of God and therefore has a unique place in God’s creation and His plan for the universe. This plan urges governments to respect its citizens’ basic rights, such as the right to life and respect for human dignity, to mention but a few. This book succeeds in postulating God as the ontological framework for the individual or human rights of man. The description of the unique value of humans in Psalm 8: 5 is striking: “For thou hast made him but little lower than God, and crownest him with glory and honor.” The gist or tenor of this book is also bolstered by the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 of 1996. This book will be invaluable to law students, lawyers and academicians engaged in human rights issues and all those policy-makers interested in the legalities of the Bill of Rights application not only of their country of nationality but in other jurisdictions as well.