Today, International Human Rights Day, is the 60th anniversary
of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR). It's a good day to visit the U.S. Human Rights Network's
site and to read, or re-read, a copy of the Declaration. At the
time of its framing, the UDHR was clearly an aspirational
document; it represented a wish, an ideal for which the world's
nations should strive. It's interesting to learn that initially
there was some debate about whether abolition of the death
penalty fell within the scope of that ideal. In her book Death
of Innocents, Sister Helen Prejean writes: It was to be expected
when Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was
debated back in the 1940s that such a declaration, which granted
everyone the right to life without qualification, would provoke
debate, and one of the first proposed amendments was that an
exception ought to be made in the case of criminals lawfully
sentenced to death. Eleanor Roosevelt urged the committee to
resist this amendment,