Human Rights and Humanity’s Rights During Year Three of the French Revolution

“Eduardo Baker offers us a masterly study of the Constitutional drafts sent to the Convention in the spring of 1793. These drafts have rarely been fully studied and this book will fill a historiographical void. Against the simplistic and monolithic views that often prevail in historiography and among legal philosophers, Baker restores the theoretical complexity and variety of the constitutional debates on Human rights in Year I of the Republic.” –Marc Belissa, Université de Paris-Nanterre, France This book explores the constitutional debates of the Year 3 of the French Revolution (also known as Year 1 of the French Republic) and the drafts for the Declaration and the Constitution of 1793. It presents the revolutionaries’ distinct view on human rights and the rights of the peoples, as well as their philosophical underpinnings. After discussing how contemporary legal history and theory, and political philosophy approached the revolutionary period, the book tackles the main topics covered during the debates and proposals. Starting with the issue of external relations and the sovereignty of the people and ending with natural rights and Republicanism, this book shows how apparently technical questions (such as what procedure should be implemented to declare a war) are intertwined with philosophical reflections on rights and with problems that were urgent at the time. Eduardo Baker is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He has also worked as an international human rights lawyer for the past ten years in regional and universal human rights protection systems.