The Liberal Project and Human Rights: The Theory and Practice of a New World Order. By John Charvet, Elisa Kaczynska-Nay. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 434 pp., $29.99 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-70959-0). Civilising Globalisation: Human Rights and the Global Economy. By David Kinley. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 256 pp., $39.99 (ISBN-13: 978-0-511-65596-8). Human Rights in Asia: A Reassessment of the Asian Values Debate. Edited by Leena Avonius, Damien Kingsbury. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 254 pp., $90.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-230-60639-5). The idea of human rights permeates virtually every aspect of international politics today, whether invoked by political elites, advocates, or academics. Arguments appealing to human rights have been advanced to both justify and denounce wars; human rights are invoked as the rallying cry for both advocates and critics of free trade; and depending on who one asks, the advent of liberal, rights-based government may either be the endpoint in humankind's ideological evolution that cannot be improved upon (Fukuyama 1992) or may simply be an ideological smokescreen behind which powerful actors seek to eliminate rival ideologies and political movements (Gong 1984). Yet despite the widespread violation of human rights throughout the globe, and the profound double standards with which even liberal states behave when it comes to human rights, the various norms embodied in international human rights law are endorsed by a vast majority of states, global corporations are increasingly accepting human rights concerns as relevant to their activities, and it is becoming much more difficult for perpetrators of human rights atrocities to escape the reach of international criminal justice. Human rights have indeed become a “hegemonic discourse” in at least two senses. First, they have become the most broadly endorsed basis for the expression of political legitimacy, and second, the idea of human rights has become the chosen conceptual framework for discussing, debating, and attempting to improve the human condition throughout the globe (Donnelly 2003:38). At the same time, this process that Kirsten Sellars (2002) once called the “rise and rise of human rights” has not been uncontested. The theory and logic of liberal human rights have come under assault from a host of critics in academic circles, including communitarians, Marxists, cultural relativists, post-structuralists, and authoritarians. Furthermore, human rights as political practice have been viewed with suspicion by corporate …