Human Rights and Duties Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Universal human rights are expressed in all of the above.

Human rights are guaranteed in international law through all its sources: treaties such as the two International Covenants of 1966 and the conventions against torture and racial discrimination; customary international law, as with the prohibitions of slavery, genocide and torture; and general principles of law and other sources recognised in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights describes human rights in exactly these terms, so no single source is the complete answer.

Answer: D

According to D.D. Basu, human rights are available against both the State and public authority.

Basu defined human rights as those minimal rights which every individual must have against the State or other public authority by virtue of being a member of the human family, irrespective of any other consideration.

Naming only the State or only a public authority leaves out half of his definition, and he did not frame human rights as rights against private persons.

Answer: C

This is the right of self-determination.

Common Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) declares that all peoples have the right of self-determination, by virtue of which they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

Self-government and self-rule describe forms of political autonomy, and the right to development is a separate third-generation right. The definition in the question is that of self-determination.

Answer: D

Section 2(1)(d) of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 defines human rights as the rights relating to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the individual guaranteed by the Constitution or embodied in the International Covenants and enforceable by courts in India. So the order is life, liberty, equality and dignity, which is (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv). The other options mix up the order of liberty, equality and dignity. The answer is (i), (ii), (iii), (iv).

Answer: D

The key regards the right to communication as the fourth generation of human rights, after the first generation of civil and political rights, the second generation of economic, social and cultural rights and the third generation of solidarity rights, such as the right to environment and development. Right to life is a first generation right, right to health a second generation one and right to environment a third generation one in the usual classification. The answer is the right to communication.

Answer: D

The concept of three generations of human rights was introduced by Karel Vasak in 1977, who linked them to the French revolutionary ideals: first generation civil and political rights (liberty), second generation economic, social and cultural rights (equality), and third generation solidarity or collective rights (fraternity), such as the right to development and to a healthy environment.

Tullius Cicero was a Roman thinker of natural law, Jeremy Bentham a utilitarian critic of natural rights, and John Finnis a modern natural law theorist. None of them introduced the three generation classification.

Answer: C

The keyed answer is A.V. Dicey, whose account of the rule of law (no man is punished except for a breach of law established in the ordinary courts, equality before the law, and rights secured by the courts) is the starting point for the modern requirements of fair procedure that natural justice stands for.

Locke is the philosopher of natural rights and the social contract, J.S. Mill the utilitarian author of On Liberty, and John Rawls the author of A Theory of Justice, on distributive justice. The doctrine of natural justice in its procedural sense, with its rules against bias and for the right to be heard, grew out of case law, and the key credits Dicey among the options.

Answer: D

Legal positivism, which holds that law is what the sovereign commands and that rights come from law and not from morality or nature alone, was propounded by John Austin in his command theory of law. So the answer is Austin.

Plato and Aristotle belong to the classical natural law tradition, in which law is tied to justice and morality, and Hegel was an idealist philosopher of the state. They did not found legal positivism.

Answer: A

The official key describes justice as a basic concept. Justice, meaning giving each person what is due, is one of the foundational ideas of law and of human rights, which is why the other options fit less well: Critical Theory is a school of social thought from the Frankfurt School, 'Theory of Marx' names one thinker's system, and feminist jurisprudence is one approach to law. None of these is simply 'justice', which is a core idea that each school argues about. The answer is Basic Concept, as the key states.

Answer: C

Human rights entitle mankind to a decent, civilized and dignified life. The idea that life means more than bare animal existence runs through Indian and international human rights law: the Supreme Court in Francis Coralie Mullin held that the right to life includes the right to live with human dignity. Comfort and convenience are not rights; they are matters of wealth and preference. 'Guarantee of existence' is too narrow, because human rights protect the quality of life and not merely survival. The answer is Decent, civilized and dignified life.