Blog #3

I think a potential danger in the UDHR is the specificity of the rights. They are positive rights, for sure, but it would almost seem that negative rights (such as those in the U.S. Constitution) are almost more freeing and therefore more universal. For instance, the UDHR guarantees the right to marriage, but neglects to define what marriage can entail--whether solely a man and a woman, two men, or several partners. A clause that would allow less possible discrepancy over interpretation would be something that either does not address it at all, or if it seems necessary to involve the government to some extent in marriage, to define the right as the inability of a government to dictate if or how a marriage could exist.

Perhaps a better, less confusing, and therefore ultimately less limiting, right would be: the right for every person for any government to be unable to interfere with respect to marriage. It would seem that the ongoing issue for most, if not all, cultures is too much government interference. It’s not that governments aren’t doing enough; it’s that they’re doing it poorly. The wording throughout the UDHR is active when it should be passive. The rights “guaranteed” in the UDHR are worded in such a way that suggest governments should actively ensure the presence of the rights, when the wording instead should be passive, limiting the powers of the government to action only when government involvement is necessary to a solution. Without a doubt, differences between cultures will result in different interpretations of the rights, and the more active those rights are, the more complexity inherent with applying them.