This book is inspired by a number of American works on the origins of their Constitution. I am indebted to my American friends, Edward and Désirée von Saher, who gave me a copy of Edward S Corwin (ed), The Constitution of the United States of America Analysis and Interpretation. I was at Yale in 1968, on a Fellowship from the Charles and Julia Henry Fund. This gift kept alive my interest in the origins of rights at a time when such sources were hard to find in English libraries.1 Jacques Maritain recounts an exchange at a discussion of rights at UNESCO. Someone expressed astonishment that champions of opposed ideologies had agreed on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: ‘â•›“Yes”, they said, “we agree about the rights but on condition that no one asks us why”â•›’. Maritain was introducing a series of papers from believers in different ideologies in which each gave their answer to the question ‘why?’2 Blackstone had given his answer in England in the eighteenth century. It was based on both reason and faith in the divine revelation in which, at that time, almost all members of the Christian societies in Europe had believed for centuries. His answer merits consideration today, as much by those who share his Christian beliefs as by those who do not. For the framers of the UN Charter, and of the UDHR, what is required of all people, religious or secular, is (see page 203) ‘faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women’. I hope that this work will make a small contribution to that end.