Abstract
The article begins with reflections on the nature, and basis, of human rights considered as moral standards. It recommends an orthodox view of their nature, as moral rights possessed by all human beings simply in virtue of their humanity and discoverable through the workings of natural reason, that makes them strongly continuous with natural rights. It then offers some criticisms of recent attempts to depart from orthodoxy by explicating human rights by reference to the supposedly constitutive connection they bear to the matter of political legit- imacy. The second half of the article turns to the legitimacy of international law, with a special focus on international human rights law. An account is sketched of the legitimacy of international law based on the service conception of legitimate author- ity. The article concludes by discussing three sources of potential limitations on international law's legitimacy: pluralism, freedom (sovereignty) and exceptionalism.
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