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This chapter analyzes the early development of the Carter administration's human rights agenda, built in tandem with a new approach to U.S.–Latin American relations during its first year in office. From the outset, the Carter administration envisioned a human rights policy that would simultaneously mitigate human rights violations abroad, build U.S. credibility and stature in the international sphere by reasserting a moral and ideological pole of attraction, and signify a move away from the excessive secrecy and power of the Cold War presidency at home. Although Carter largely shared the premises of the Movement's vision, differences over the implementation and signifiers of this policy in high-level diplomacy created rifts between like-minded advocates and policy makers. Carter found himself grappling with the legacies of both U.S. intervention in the region and also congressional and public distrust stemming from past excesses of the Cold War presidency. The administration's options in implementing its policy were bounded by both past regional relations and human rights advocacy itself.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of how different groups deployed human rights language to reform domestic and international power, which reveals the multiple and often conflicting purposes of U.S. human rights policy. U.S. Cold War policies were deeply implicated in the human rights violations perpetrated by many of Latin America's governments. This entanglement of U.S. policy and human rights abuses make the Western Hemisphere a critical site for the development and implementation of U.S. human rights diplomacy during the Ford, Carter, and Reagan presidencies. New human rights advocacy targeting Latin America in the 1970s not only sought to mitigate foreign abuses but also challenge Cold War relationships between the United States and repressive right-wing regimes, contesting presidential prerogatives over the very mechanisms of U.S. foreign policy making. Latin America is essential for revealing the uniquely anti-interventionist and self-critical elements of human rights policy that took shape at this time; it was at the core — not the periphery — of both U.S. domestic policy debates and the new international policies that reached far beyond the hemisphere.

This chapter reflects on the work of criminal defense lawyers. Although engaged in forgiveness work, particularly post-sentencing, lawyers occupy a distinct position in relation to other actors. Lawyers who take up qisas cases, like anti-death penalty lawyers elsewhere, often possess a deeper agenda and, as cause lawyers, go beyond ethical self-fashioning or culture-building. They seek to enforce the rule of law. They work with and within the laws, but their ethically grounded advocacy risks placing them in the precarious space of apparent opposition to the system itself. The position of defense lawyers, whose rights-based advocacy sits in uncomfortable opposition to the gift economy of forgiveness, ultimately highlights the tensions of human rights advocacy in this climate.

The chapter argues that committing our professional futures to human rights struggles requires not only moral commitment but also the sense that we are being effective and strategic in our approaches to change making. The contribution discusses how to think strategically and apply that thinking to practical situations that are still active arenas of conflict over ideals of justice and present us with complex realities of power imbalance. Focusing on this kind of strategic and outcome oriented human rights practice, the chapter suggests strategies to broaden our understanding of available tactics, use tactical mapping and other strategizing tools to be more effective in an active human rights struggle, and apply analytic frameworks that help us think through the acceptable balance between risk and success in making social change.

Chapter 8 concludes the book by returning to the guiding principle of children’s rights law: the best interests of the child. The authors seek to explicate the role that children’s literature can and does play in educating children about their rights and the rights of others and in contributing to a human rights culture. The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers is offered as a case study to illustrate how many stories convey important messages on multiple human rights issues. The chapter also considers the role of children’s literature in human rights advocacy and human rights education. Finally, the authors consider how children’s literature might help adults enhance their understanding of children rights.

This essay introduces readers to the essays in the volume and its cross cutting themes and topics, including the histories and genealogies of the concept of religious freedom, the difficulties of locating and defining religion, and the interrelationship of law and religion. Examples from Pakistan and Myanmar illustrate the challenges of religious freedom advocacy today. The deployments of religious freedom are multiple and contradictory, at times used to identify the virtuous and condemn the oppressor, other times on behalf of women and minorities, and sometimes to serve narrow sectarian interests of missionaries, governments, and religious authorities. There are significant and not yet fully explored connections between religious freedom advocacy, economic liberalization, and the “free market” model of religious growth.