The State, the Law, and Human Rights in Modern Greece

Abstract

Controversy has revolved around the issue of the universalism of human rights versus cultural relativism. Advocates of universality contend that individual rights either are or are becoming valid throughout the world. Although the notion of individual human rights emerged at a particular historical epoch in Europe, it is argued that in the post World War II era, this concept of rights is being disseminated along with modernization. Therefore, communalism, characteristic of traditional societies, is gradually being replaced by notions of individual human rights.1 This study of human rights in modern Greece attempts to answer the question of whether the Western conception of individual human rights is applicable to a peripheral European country. Greece's historical legacy is rooted in German legal positivism, and not in Anglo-Saxon liberalism, a difference with significant consequences for the standing of human rights. In the West itself there are varying notions as to the source of human rights and their philosophic foundations. Claims to universality may reflect an AngloSaxon primarily American ethnocentric bias. There are divergent conceptions regarding the origin and justification of rights among the European