U.S. National Human Rights Institution: A Bad Idea

By Steven Groves

The Heritage Foundation - November 15, 2013

Abstract

Human rights activists have called for creation of a U.S. National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) to promote and monitor implementation of international human rights treaties, norms, and standards in the United States. Yet any violation of human rights as such rights are understood in the U.S. legal system is already justiciable in U.S. courts. Instead, activists would use a U.S. NHRI to promote economic, social, and cultural “rights” that lack constitutional or legal foundation and have been rejected for decades by the U.S. Supreme Court. Congress should reject any attempt to create a U.S. NHRI or expand the mandate of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to include the enforcement of human rights.

For several years elements of the international human rights community have advocated that the United States should establish a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) to promote and monitor implementation of international human rights treaties, norms, and standards in the United States. However, creating a NHRI is a bad idea.
Human rights activists would use a NHRI to advocate for recognition of supra-constitutional human rights norms that the U.S. has chosen not to recognize and find no support under the law. The NHRI’s central mission would be to promote economic, social, and cultural (ESC) “rights” that lack constitutional or legal foundation and have been rejected for decades by the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress. The NHRI would serve as a platform to harass U.S. business and industry with subpoenas, investigations, and show hearings for allegedly violating such “human rights” as the “right to a healthy environment” and the “right to water.”

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