Have Human Rights Treaties Failed?

To say that human rights treaties are too ambitious and even utopian, and that it overwhelms  governments with obligations that they can’t possibly keep, is like inviting the disobedience of every law which is arduous for us to compliance.
In fact, international law does not create fundamental rights but it just recognize them as existing. That is to say, human rights already exist in each person, they are inherent to human nature. Human rights are prior and superior to the positive law system.
The idea of discarding all international treaties dealing with human rights as suggested by Professor Posner does not make sense, because human rights would survive any attack.
Otherwise, the State as a political institution justifies its existence on respect, promotion and defense of human rights within their jurisdiction. Like Jacques Maritain said long ago, "The State is for man and not the man for the State ".
Certainly justice is an arduous good especially in our times, but to resign the search for a just social order is to deny the very reason of law.

(Debate between Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch and Eric Posner, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. Source: The New York Times , The Opinion Pages, " Room For Debate" December 28, 2014 ).

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