The United States: Human Rights Leader or Laggard?

I think, if one made a fair assessment of human rights practices in the United States, one would have to say that, all things considered, overall we are pretty fortunate.I am going to say some pretty critical things about the United States in a moment, but I do not anticipate being arrested at the end of this conference.I expect Ruth and I will get into a rather heated debate, and if that somehow comes to blows and I am arrested on criminal charges, I expect due process.So in that sense, in some of the basic ways, we do have broad respect for human rights here in the United States.You would think that our government could be proud of its overall record, with the exceptions that I will get into in a moment.But ironically, the U.S. Government's attitude toward international human rights law has been one of utter distrust.You see this first in how the United States has gone about ratifyingor not ratifyingthe leading human rights treaties.Many of them have not been ratified at all.The treaty dealing with the rights of women, 1 the treaty dealing with the rights of children, 2 the treaty dealing with economic, social, and cultural rights, 3 the leading treaty dealing with humanitarian law or the laws of war 4these the United States has not gotten around to ratifying and, in some cases, there is no prospect of ratification.