Do You Think There's a Way to Justify Rights?

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After abu grabe, it all came out that we were doing enhanced interrogation. You know, when you look at what they were doing, it's torture by anybody's definition. Do you think there's a way to justify rights other than by fiat? I meant was it jeremy bentham said, rights are, you know, just delusions on stilts, or something like thato. They don't really exist. But interestingly, lots the idea of rights is very particular to the euro american world. That's how we've come to think about how society ought to be organized in terms of rights. And it suits us pretty well.

Rulers throughout history have used laws to impose order. But laws were not simply instruments of power and social control. They also offered ordinary people a way to express their diverse visions for a better world. The variety of the world’s laws has long been almost as great as the variety of its societies.

In this conversation, Shermer speaks with Oxford professor of the anthropology of law, Fernanda Pirie, who traces the rise and fall of the sophisticated legal systems underpinning ancient empires and religious traditions, showing how common people — tribal assemblies, merchants, farmers — called on laws to define their communities, regulate trade, and build civilizations. What truly unites human beings, Pirie argues, is our very faith that laws can produce justice, combat oppression, and create order from chaos.