It's not easy, running a gulag

[Pindar]

I guess the self-evident truth that all men are endowed with certain unalienable rights is lost on teh Americans.

No, it's just some of us understand the theoretical underpinnings of unalienable rights claims.

@Pindar and Soulforged. You two are responding with legal arguments to HoreTore. Or dare I say, legalistic. He initially did present his case as a legal argument, while failing to come up with a legal argument. But he changed to the sphere of legal philosophy in his last post. If you two tireless legal positivists are Hart, he is now Dworkin, if I remember them right.
HT's latest position can not be dismissed anymore by your repeating that the UDoHR carries no direct legal status. That would suffice in a court of law, but he is now arguing from a natural law position that no legal position that goes against the UDoHR carries, or rather, should carry, legal status.

Our good HoreTore has not made any appeal to natural law. He has simply made assertions. This will not do. I will not do the thinking for my interlocutor.

Note: Dworkin is far far away from any natural law posture.

I for one wouldn't mind hearing a legal philosophical rebuttal from either of you two (former) law students that says he's wrong in this.

I'm always happy to respond to arguments when they are presented. I can't give rebuttal to an argument that doesn't exist.

[Pindar]

Well, I didn't get the lawyer-thingy, I'm not making a legal argument, I couldn't care less about that. You are not technically bound to follow it, but if you intend to make the world livable, you are bound to follow it. And isn't that what the bush administration is claiming to do? Civilized countries have chosen to put the human rights court above their own laws, and I hope the US will follow our example. The HR were created to avoid the atrocities of ww2 to happen again. For that to happen, it will first need recognition, which it has. Second, it will need authority, which it only has in a few places in the world.

I assume HR is Human Rights. HR predates WWII.

And no, a charge doesn't have to mean criminal charge.

If charge has any referent to legal discourse then yes, it does. If charge has no tie to legal discourse then I assume there isn't meant to be any attending procedure to what you cited. If that is the case then the phraseology is vacuous.

The HR were created by basically the entire world. It's not like a few people sat down and decided something. And it's special in the case of the US, since they figured heavily in the making of them. If what you claim is correct, then the document is basically completely worthless. Why then do we have a human rights court, and trials where states are punished and they follow the verdict to the letter? So I'll ask you, do you think the document is a waste of paperwork, or is it a good foundation for a civilized society?

The Declaration of Human Rights (DHR) out of the U.N. is a piece of rhetoric. It cannot be taken for more given the legal standing of the U.N. and the moral absurdity that confronts the U.N.

As to the content of the DHR: by and large I think its good stuff. I'm not sure how you'll tie that to the larger argument about habeas corpus which is the focus.