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'... provide[s] an interesting contribution to one of the major debates occurring in human rights scholarship at the present time. This is the changing role of history in human rights scholarship.' Cambridge Law Journal Wiktor Osiatynski has devoted over four decades to promoting human rights in every part of the the world, while thinking deeply in print and otherwise, about the scope and limits of these efforts. This book, the product of those decades, combines profound practical wisdom with wide-ranging scholarship and intellectual rigor. His sensitivity to values and needs other than human rights will not make everyone happy, but for anyone who wants to advance these rights in a very complicated world, this book is required reading. --Herman Schwartz, Professor of Law, The American University Washington College of Law; Author of The Struggle For Constitutional Justice in Post-Communist Europe (Chicago 2001) In Human Rights and Their Limits, Professor Wiktor Osiatynski sets forth a soft universalism conception of human rights that focuses on satisfying basic human needs and respecting different cultures, but retreats from the imposition of a particular rights regime. Drawing upon his extensive work on human rights issues in Poland and other transitional countries, Professor Osiatynski details the sociopolitical environments that are most likely to foster development of such rights. His compelling account imagines human rights as a framework of aspirational principles tailored to fit individual states and peoples, interweaving history and philosophy as entry points for illustration and debate. Professor Osiatynski concludes that although human rights are worthy goals, they must be weighed against other competing social and cultural values. Overall, Human Rights and Their Limits offers a valuable contribution to the existing human rights literature by identifying competing social values and redefining universal rights in more pragmatic terms. Harvard Law Review

'... provide[s] an interesting contribution to one of the major debates occurring in human rights scholarship at the present time. This is the changing role of history in human rights scholarship.' Cambridge Law Journal

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Wiktor Osiatyński is a professor at the Central European University, where he teaches at the CEU Legal Program in Budapest. He is a former co-director of the Center for the Study of Constitutionalism in Eastern Europe at the Chicago Law School and an advisor to a number of constitutional committees of Poland's parliament. The author of more than twenty books, Osiatyński is a member of the board of the Open Society Institute Budapest and of the board of the OSI Justice Initiative as well as of a Human Rights and Governance Grant Program at the OSI. In 2007, he cofounded the Women's Party in Poland.

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