The Contradictions of Rights

Linebaugh discusses many contradictions in interpretations of the Magna Carta.  In his discussion of contradictions, I didn't get a sense of what it is that allows so many contradictions to be employed when using the Magna Carta as an assertion of foundational values.  Linebaugh does a great job of pointing out the many contradictions –the disenfranchisement of women from the commons, habeas corpus and trying slaves, and Thomas Paine’s co-optation of the Magna Carta in favor of privatization, to name a few.  It seems to me that one of the reasons is the inherent contradiction within Article 29 of the Magna Carta: “No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised, outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will We proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land” (Magna Carta, Article 29). The “freeman” is a completely subjective subject position open for interpretation.  Although this is often read as a declaration of rights, the document is predicated on inequality.  Of course, the very need to declare rights in some way presumes the lack thereof.  The King’s legislation did not speak of any such rights for serfs, only for the “freeman”.  I also question if this is really about the rights of a group because, even though it states “freeman,” the only freemen were nobility.  Thus I wonder if this has more to do with the individual rights of members of a group than it is to do with individual rights.

Ostensibly, the question of individual rights is elevated in human rights discourse.  However, there remains significant tension between the rights of an individual and the rights of individual members of a group.  The risk, of course, is maintaining hierarchical and privileged groups (like Christians, men, etc.).  Even the UN’s website on human rights is vague in explaining what human rights are and who they are for:

•  Human rights are founded on respect for the dignity and worth of each person;
• Human rights are universal, meaning that they are applied equally and without discrimination to all people;
• Human rights are inalienable, in that no one can have his or her human rights taken away; they can be limited in specific situations (for example, the right to liberty can be restricted if a person is found guilty of a crime by a court of law);
• Human rights are indivisible, interrelated and interdependent, for the reason that it is insufficient to respect some human rights and not others. In practice, the violation of one right will often affect respect for several other rights.
• All human rights should therefore be seen as having equal importance and of being equally essential to respect for the dignity and worth of every person.

(http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/briefingpapers/humanrights/index.shtml)

Much is left up to interpretation here.  What is considered respect or dignity or worth?  Human rights are inalienable, but they can be taken away – a serious contradiction it seems.  These attempts to universalize human rights more clearly show the inability to clearly define and be specific about what those rights are than they show individuals enjoying these rights.  It seems to me that one major problem is that from the Magna Carta to the current United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, one must interpret those rights, which destabilizes the very notion of universal human rights.  Systems of belief, ideologies, religions, politics, all sorts of identity categories militate against interpretations that would prevent these rights from being enacted/exercised.  What kind of radical change would address these contradictions?