WASHINGTON -- Concern for human rights has become the universal preoccupation. Whole armies have been mobilized by the international community against their abuse -- most recently in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Complex charters and networks of international law have been constructed to enshrine them and courts and judges empowered to enforce them and punish those who flout them, whether governments or individuals.
Truly this has become an age of personal rights above everything, including sovereign states, domestic laws and traditional customs -- to the delight of idealists and the pleasure of international lawyers, who find themselves endowed with vast new powers.
And yet there is a worm in the apple. One individual's or group's "rights" may be another individual's or group's "wrongs." Take the example of convicted terrorists on the run. The doctrine of human rights says that nobody may be either interned or deported to the country that wants them without a full and fair trial, together with right of appeal.