The Ligue des Droits de l'Homme and the ‘Right to Life’ in the 1930s

This article examines the debates within the French Ligue des Droits de l'Homme on the adoption in 1936 of a Complément (Complement) to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. The Ligue questioned the relevance of the 1789 Declaration when social dislocation, economic distress and fascism challenged democracy. New rights, principally the ‘right to life’ (droit à la vie), the fundamental right from which all others flowed, were pronounced. The article examines the values and principles informing the Complément to address why a declaration of new rights was seen as a proper response to these crises. Aspirations for a radical transformation of the social, political and economic order were expressed in a genre and a language of rights deeply embedded in French history. The Complément continued the work of 1789, assuming a form through which this transformation could be imagined.