Description
MANIPULATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Book Summary
This work offers a critical and profound analysis of how the moral argument underpinning Human Rights can be instrumentalized. The author examines the core values of these rights, which have become a quasi-universal dogma, to reveal the mechanisms of manipulation operating within the legal and social spheres. An essential study for understanding the tensions between their ethical foundation and their strategic use in contemporary law.
What is it about?
Carlos Manuel Rosales begins with the premise that Human Rights possess a core of values that has elevated them to the category of moral dogma for jurists and society alike. However, the book warns that this same ethical foundation makes them a tool vulnerable to manipulation. Through rigorous analysis, the work unravels how a legal system originally designed to protect the majority can be reinterpreted, distorted, or used for purposes other than those for which it was created. The text invites reflection on the distance between the rhetoric of rights and their actual application, exploring the paradoxes of a normative framework that, while universal in its declaration, proves selective in its practice.
Main Themes
- Moral foundation of Human Rights and their function as a legal argument.
- Mechanisms of instrumentalization and manipulation of rights discourse.
- Tension between the theoretical universality of rights and their selective application.
- Relationship between the legal system and the real needs of the population.
- Critique of the dogmatic character of Human Rights in legal practice.
Who is it recommended for?
This book is aimed at legal professionals, academics, students of legal and political sciences, as well as activists and human rights defenders interested in a critical and demystifying look at the system. It will also be of great value to any reader seeking to understand the internal contradictions of international protection legal frameworks.
What this book offers
- A critical perspective that questions the uncritical use of Human Rights discourse.
- Analytical tools to identify when a rights-based argument is genuine and when it is instrumentalized.
- Understanding of the paradoxes between universalist rhetoric and concrete legal practice.
- An approach that connects normative design with real social deficiencies and needs.
Technical Data Sheet
- Author: ROSALES, CARLOS MANUEL
- Publisher: J.M.BOSCH
- Language: Spanish
- Topic: International protection of human rights, Fundamental rights and public freedoms
- Collection: HUMAN RIGHTS
- Publication Date: July 2025
- Number of pages: 326
- Weight: 620 g
Editorial Assessment
This is a necessary work in the current legal landscape, where the discourse of human rights has become omnipresent but is rarely subjected to critical scrutiny. The value of the book lies in its ability to dismantle the aura of untouchability that surrounds these rights, offering the reader a rigorous and well-founded analytical tool. It will be especially useful for those seeking to go beyond rhetoric and understand the real complexities of the legal protection of individuals.

