402 Global Ethics for Leadership
Rights (UDHR), approved by the United Nations General Assembly in
1948, highlight the intricate ways in which the heritage of religious
teachings infuses its core principles.^305 As one example, referring to
Aquinas and invoking the ancient notion of “natural law”, legal scholar
Andrew Woodcock argues that what unites divergent interpretations of
rights “is that there is a revelation of law beyond that defined by the
institutional sources of law, and that there are certain basic concepts
which ought to underlie all legal principles”.^306 Philosopher Jacques
Maritain who managed the UNESCO consultation on the UDHR^307 ,
highlighted this religious legacy but also its complexity, in noting that
there was broad agreement on the principles (and thus the values) even
as there was considerable disagreement on their source and justification.
There is a “however”. The rather common assertion that without re-
ligious foundations there can be no solid ethics and, by extension, that
no leader can be ethical unless they are a religious believer leads one to
a slippery and dangerous slope. Such suggestions over-simplify the
complex derivations of ethical norms at community and individual lev-
els and the way that even the most seemingly clear understandings of
ethics and values work in practice. Such assertions denigrate those who
fall outside religious communities. Further, a blanket assertion that the
source of all viable ethical norms is religious can obscure the complex
debates that in practice surround interpretation and application of ethical
standards in law and in society. Such oversimplifications are not useful
and they can be perilous.
305
Mary Ellen Glendon, (2002) A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights 306. Random House.
Andrew Woodcock, “Jacques Maritain, Natural Law and the Universal Decla-
ration of Human Rights”, Journal of the History of International Law 8: 245–
266, 2006 307
UNESCO (ed.) Human Rights: Comments and Interpretations, (London:
Allan Wingate, 1949),