Legislative Human Rights

We want to explore the idea of "legislating human rights". What might human rights legislation be? What are its distinctive characteristics? What marks it out from other human rights instruments? How might the concept be institutionalized? Such questions present us with a number of fluid concepts that require some stipulated clarification in order to render these questions answerable.By "human rights legislation" we do not mean enacted bills of rights,which are statements of general moral principles enacted for the purpose of guiding judicial interpretation, or setting up a system of judicial review of legislation. By "human rights legislation" we mean legislation that promotes human rights in a legislative manner, that is by the enactment of a body of clear and specific rules that can be followed and applied without using broadly based moral reasoning.This normative model of legislation, and the virtues of rulegovernance associated with it, is generally derived from a democratic theory of prescriptive legal positivism.