The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is often considered to be a part of the “natural law” tradition. This might mean that, whoever drafted the text, they were inspired by the natural law that resides in all of us. Such a claim is not falsifiable using historical methods, and will not be addressed here. It might mean, though, that thinkers and politicians who were demonstrably part of the natural law tradition played a large role in the drafting of the UDHR. This position, which will be contested in this essay, has been defended by numerous historians, most notably Mary Ann Glendon. The evidence shows that the natural law tradition, as it existed between the 1890s and the 1950s, was somewhere between skeptical and antagonistic towards human rights claims. The evidence also shows that natural law thinkers who were in the orbit of the UDHR, most notably Jacques Maritain, were not as influential as Glendon and others have claimed. As a historical matter, therefore, the UDHR is not in any substantive way a part of the natural law tradition. At most, natural law was one among a number of competing traditions that all played a role.

Mary Ann Glendon is a prolific and broad-ranging scholar who has also made important forays into public service on behalf of the United States and the Holy See. Her scholarly work can be best understood not as the systematic development or application of a particular jurisprudential school of thought, but rather as the painstaking work of pursuing a series of insights into the transitions to be made in law and in society, across a broad range of discrete topics, around the turn of the twenty-first century. Certain persistent and coherent themes have animated and united her work, especially ideas that resonate deeply with Catholic social thought. Across her scholarly writing on labor and property law, family law, the legal profession, constitutional law, and international human rights, she has remained persistently concerned with the role and importance of mediating institutions of civil society, especially families, with the systemic relationships between law and society, and with the unique importance of comparative methods to help arrive at a sound balance between universal ideals of justice, liberty, and dignity, on the one hand, and the value of the diversity and particularity of local communities, on the other.