The protective reach of human rights has expanded over time. However, some have argued that this expansion constitutes illegitimate rights inflation, and for some conservative stakeholders, the modern development of rights has been at odds with their positions on issues such as reproductive rights and marriage equality. Against this backdrop, the Trump Administration launched the Commission on Unalienable Rights in 2019 to “reexamine” rights. It might be expected that such an initiative would reject human rights. However, it embraced rights discourse, positioned it as central to US values and policy, and called on the United States to pursue rights with “renewed vigor.” This article offers a decoding of this apparent embrace. We argue that rather than renewing commitments to rights, the Commission appropriated human rights. It reworked the human rights canon from within by elevating some rights over others, and by narrowing rights in line with conservative takes on where rights come from, who they should protect, and which rights matter. This article offers a framework for analyzing how appropriation happens, and where and in what ways it is contested. We identify four core elements to appropriation and spaces for challenging it: messenger and motive legitimacy; process legitimacy; substantive legitimacy; and norm diffusion. This framework makes visible the sites and processes of appropriation under the cover of protecting rights, that in practice seek to roll back understandings of right and their sources. While the Commission was disavowed by the subsequent US administration, conservative efforts to redefine rights are ongoing—including through promotion of the Commission’s work—and share many of the same normative underpinnings of the Commission’s establishment and rollout. Making apparent the strategies and mechanisms of appropriation through this case-study therefore enables recognition of future conservative moves to appropriate rights and provides insights into how to resist such efforts.

中文翻译：

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权利的占用和改写

随着时间的推移，人权的保护范围不断扩大。然而，一些人认为这种扩张构成了非法的权利膨胀，对于一些保守的利益相关者来说，权利的现代发展与他们在生育权和婚姻平等等问题上的立场不一致。在此背景下，特朗普政府于2019年成立不可剥夺权利委员会，对权利进行“重新审视”。可以预料，这样的倡议会拒绝人权。然而，它接受了权利话语，将其定位为美国价值观和政策的核心，并呼吁美国以“新的活力”追求权利。本文提供了对这种明显拥抱的解码。我们认为，委员会没有重申对权利的承诺，而是挪用了人权。它通过将某些权利提升到其他权利之上，并根据保守派对权利从何而来、他们应该保护谁以及哪些权利很重要来缩小权利范围，从内部重新制定了人权准则。本文提供了一个框架，用于分析挪用是如何发生的，以及它在何处以何种方式受到质疑。我们确定了拨款的四个核心要素和挑战它的空间：信使和动机合法性；过程合法性；实质合法性；和规范扩散。该框架在保护权利的掩护下使挪用的地点和过程可见，这在实践中寻求回滚对权利及其来源的理解。尽管该委员会被随后的美国政府否决，保守派正在努力重新定义权利——包括通过促进委员会的工作——并分享委员会成立和推出的许多相同的规范基础。因此，通过本案例研究使挪用的策略和机制显而易见，从而使人们能够认识到未来保守派向适当权利采取的行动，并提供有关如何抵制此类努力的见解。