Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, (2009), pp. 1–13 doi:10.1093/ojls/gqp025 Griffin on Human Rights † BRAD HOOKER* Abstract—This review article considers James Griffin’s book On Human Rights, which is an immensely important contribution to moral and political thought. The review article starts by explaining why Griffin thinks that the term ‘human right’ suffers from an unacceptable indeterminateness of sense, and then summarizes Griffin’s objections to various prominent accounts of human rights. An outline of Griffin’s own account of human rights follows. His theory grounds human rights in ‘personhood’ and practicalities. The final section of the article explores Griffin’s objections to rule-consequentialism’s approach to human rights. The rhetorical power of claims made in the name of human rights seduced many people and groups into stating their moral claims in terms of human rights. Moral claims made in the name of human rights thus proliferated wildly. Proliferation was so widespread as to threaten not only to debase the rhetorical power of the term ‘human right’ but also to blur conditions for appropriate application of the term. The practical result has been a series of heated but unclear debates. James Griffin’s On Human Rights is the product of more than ten years of reading about, discussing and writing on the nature and extent of human rights. The whole book is highly polished, carefully and powerfully argued, and remarkably rewarding. Furthermore, it does precisely what a book on human rights should do—address on-going debates about the extension of human rights, assess competing views about what makes something a human right, and make a compelling case that ‘the sense of the term ‘‘human right’’ must be made much more determinate’ in a certain way. 1 This book is a masterpiece. The book begins with a survey of the history of the concept of human rights and of ratified lists of human rights. It proceeds to put forward a philosophical account of human rights, to develop this account in detail, and then to consider the most prominent debates about the extension of human rights. Civil rights, rights to life, rights to death, privacy rights, rights to democratic government and group rights receive careful scrutiny. † A review of James Griffin, On Human Rights (OUP, Oxford 2008). * Philosophy Department, University of Reading. Email: b.w.hooker@reading.ac.uk 1 James Griffin, On Human Rights (OUP, Oxford 2008) 53. ß The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org Oxford Journal of Legal Studies Advance Access published September 30, 2009