The chapter opens by examining why rights must be formally declared. The 1776 American and 1789 French declarations transferred sovereignty from the monarch to the nation. English subjects had established a long tradition of declarations of rights: the Magna Carta of 1215, the Petition of Right of 1628, and the Bill of Rights of 1689. By the late 18th century, terms like charter, petition, and bill seemed inadequate because they implied requests to higher powers. The word declaration, by contrast, could signify an intent to seize sovereignty itself. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence explicitly announced the colonies’ assumption of separate statehood, while the French deputies omitted any mention of the king, asserting that rights flow from human nature rather than royal grant. Both declarations were simultaneously backward-looking (confirming preexisting rights) and forward-looking (creating governments justified by guaranteeing universal rights).

In America, two versions of rights language—particularistic (specific to a national tradition) and universalistic (rights of all mankind)—competed throughout the 1760s and 1770s. American pamphleteers emphasized their rights as British colonists. The Declaration of Independence invoked universal rights, but the Constitution of 1787 and the Bill of Rights of 1791 returned to particularism, protecting American citizens from the federal government. The French embraced universalism to undercut the monarchy’s historical claims. Deputy Mathieu de Montmorency urged the French to follow the American example.

Early proponents of universal rights included Grotius, who in 1625 defined natural rights as self-possessed and separate from divine will, and his German follower Samuel Pufendorf. Swiss theorist Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui synthesized these ideas in his 1747 work, The Principles of Natural Law, linking natural rights to an internal moral sense. His work, translated into English and Dutch, influenced American revolutionaries like Jefferson and James Madison. English thinkers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke also contributed to universalist thinking, though Hobbes’s belief that rights must be surrendered to absolute authority limited his influence. Locke defined natural rights as life, liberty, and property but did not challenge slavery. Despite these thinkers, most 18th-century English discussion focused on the particular rights of the “freeborn English man,” as articulated by jurist William Blackstone in the 1750s, who claimed that while natural liberties once belonged to all mankind, only the English had preserved them.

From the 1760s onward, universalistic and particularistic strands intertwined in the American colonies. Boston lawyer James Otis’s 1764 pamphlet affirmed both natural rights and British citizenship rights. As conflict with Britain intensified, colonists increasingly relied on universal rights to justify independence. By 1774, with British authority collapsing, colonists viewed themselves in a state of nature, making Burlamaqui’s universalism more relevant. Before Congress declared independence, colonies drafted state constitutions with bills of rights; Virginia’s Declaration of Rights of June 12, 1776, proclaimed all men equally free and independent, with inherent rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, establishing a template for later documents.

In Britain itself, universalistic rights language expanded in the 1760s. Book titles mentioning rights increased after declining earlier in the century. Writers mixed references to the natural rights of mankind with the rights of free Britons. War with the colonists brought universalism more fully into public debate. Richard Price’s 1776 pamphlet, Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, which went through 15 editions that year, based support for the colonists on universal rights of humanity rather than English precedent. The pamphlet was translated into French, German, and Dutch. Price’s work sparked fierce controversy, with some 30 opposing pamphlets accusing him of sedition and treason. The debate centered on whether unalienable rights of human nature actually existed.

This articulation of natural rights generated a counter-tradition arguing that such rights were fabrications or not truly unalienable. Robert Filmer had refuted Grotius in 1679, calling natural freedom absurd. Jeremy Bentham, later famous as the founder of Utilitarianism, rejected natural law in 1775, arguing that only positive law mattered and that utility—the greatest happiness of the greatest number—should measure right and wrong. He later dismissed natural rights as “nonsense upon stilts.” Despite critics, rights discourse gained momentum. French economist Pierre-Samuel du Pont de Nemours offered his own definition in 1768, including occupational freedom, free trade, public education, and proportional taxation.

After 1776, universalist rights language returned to Europe as America focused on institutional development. The Articles of Confederation contained no bill of rights, and the Constitution of 1787 was approved without one; the US Bill of Rights came only with ratification of the first 10 amendments in 1791, as a particularistic document protecting citizens from the federal government. The French Declaration of 1789 preceded the American Bill of Rights and attracted immediate international attention.

The American example energized French rights discourse. Rousseau, who had coined the phrase rights of man, grew disenchanted by 1769 and died in 1778 before seeing independence’s full impact. Between 1776 and 1783, numerous French translations of American founding documents popularized rights doctrines. Some reformers, including Condorcet, expressed disappointment with the aristocratic character of the US Constitution, but many praised Americans for escaping the past’s constraints. Facing bankruptcy from supporting American independence, Louis XVI convoked the Estates-General in 1788 for the first time since 1614. As elections began, Jefferson’s friend Lafayette drafted a declaration, as did Condorcet. Many grievance lists referenced the unalienable rights of man, with some—especially from nobles—explicitly demanding a declaration to preface a new constitution.

On June 17, 1789, the French National Assembly was constituted as a government representing the entire nation. On June 19, a deputy proposed drafting a declaration of rights. A Committee on the Constitution formed on July 6 and announced on July 9 that its first task would be a declaration. Jefferson wrote to Thomas Paine, author of the revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense, on July 11, describing the Assembly’s plan to rebuild government from its foundation. Lafayette read his draft to the Assembly that day. On July 14, Parisian crowds attacked the Bastille after the king moved troops into Paris; he subsequently withdrew them. In late July and early August, deputies debated whether a declaration was necessary, reflecting fundamental disagreements about whether the existing power structure should be reformed or rebuilt from the ground up. On August 4, the Assembly voted to draft a declaration without a corresponding statement of duties. Deputy Rabaut Saint-Etienne drew parallels to America on August 18, stating that both peoples sought regeneration. During tumultuous debates from August 20-26, deputies agreed to 17 of 24 proposed articles. On August 27, they postponed further discussion until after drafting a constitution, inadvertently finalizing the Declaration.

The French Declaration proclaimed that all men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Natural, inalienable, and sacred rights included liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. All citizens could participate in lawmaking and consent to taxation, and all faced equal apportionment of taxes. The Declaration forbade arbitrary orders, unnecessary punishments, presumptions of guilt, and unnecessary property seizure. It affirmed freedom of opinion, including religion, and freedom of the press. Sovereignty rested exclusively in the nation, with society having the right to hold public agents accountable. The king, French tradition, and the Catholic Church went unmentioned. Though invoking the Supreme Being, the Declaration traced rights to nature, reason, and society rather than divine sources, contrasting with Jefferson’s assertion that people were endowed with rights by their divine creator. The document’s universal language made no distinctions by class, religion, or sex. The Committee on the Constitution had originally planned four separate documents on rights—of man, the nation, the king, and citizens—but the adopted version combined the rights of man, the nation, and citizens, while omitting the rights of the king. The declaration seized sovereignty from the king, opening urgent new questions about the king’s role while extending rights to previously excluded groups, such as women and enslaved people.

The Declaration transformed international political discourse. Richard Price adopted the new French terminology in a November 1789 sermon celebrating the American and French revolutions as witnesses to better understanding of the rights of man. Edmund Burke’s 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France fiercely attacked the Declaration, arguing that abstract reason could not provide adequate foundations for government, which required roots in national traditions. Thomas Paine’s 1791 Rights of Man defended the Declaration and attacked hereditary monarchy, achieving immense popularity across multiple English editions. Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1790 Vindication of the Rights of Men appeared before Paine’s. The Burke-Paine controversy caused rights language to surge dramatically; English book titles using rights quadrupled in the 1790s compared to the 1780s. Similar increases occurred in Dutch and German publications. These international debates disseminated human rights language throughout the Western world.

Six weeks after passing the Declaration, on October 8-9, 1789, French deputies abolished all judicial torture. This reform followed a September 10 petition from the Paris city council, concerned about arrests by Lafayette’s National Guard after the July upheaval. A Committee of Seven drafted urgent judicial reforms. On October 5, massive crowds marched to Versailles, forcing Louis XVI to approve the Declaration; the next day, the king and his family were compelled to move to Paris, and the Assembly relocated there. The October 8-9 decree invoked the Declaration’s general justice principles and specified procedures ensuring transparency in criminal proceedings, including electing district commissioners to oversee evidence collection. Article 24 abolished all forms of torture, including the “preliminary question” (torture for accomplices’ names) that Louis XVI had only provisionally forbidden, and the humiliating stool (sellette) used for final interrogations. A deputy presenting the decree urged colleagues to complete this act of reason and justice by abolishing torture’s last vestiges.

In May 1791, Louis-Michel Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau, a former Parlement of Paris judge, presented the Committee on Criminal Law’s proposal for complete penal code revision. He denounced the atrocious tortures and absurd ferocity of old laws, proposing a code based on principles of humanity, emphasizing rehabilitation through work rather than retribution through pain. The new code prioritized equality, with identical courts, laws, and punishments for all. Deprivation of liberty became the primary punishment; galley service and banishment were replaced by imprisonment and forced labor, keeping criminals visible to society. Though deputies restored the death penalty for limited crimes, they excluded religious offenses like heresy, sacrilege, and magic; “sodomy” was no longer criminal. Decapitation, previously reserved for nobles, became the sole execution method; the guillotine, claiming to provide a quick and painless death, entered operation in April 1792. Breaking on the wheel and burning at the stake disappeared as incompatible with humane, enlightened values.

Lepeletier addressed bodily mutilation and branding at length, arguing that permanent marks prevented criminals from rejoining society. Under the new order, municipal registers tracking all inhabitants would make vagabonds or criminals identifiable without bodily marking. The penal code carefully balanced deterrence with rehabilitation, prescribing limited public exposure (maximum three days) to avoid excessive degradation. Religious elements of punishment disappeared; the formal act of penitence (amende honorable)—where convicts with ropes around their necks begged forgiveness at church doors—was replaced by secular civic degradation. This involved public reading of the sentence, two hours in an iron collar, and a placard displaying the convict’s name, crime, and judgment. For women, foreigners, and repeat offenders lacking voting or office-holding rights, the punishment involved the collar and placard but omitted the verbal stripping of civic standing. Other suppressed dishonoring punishments included stocks, pillory, dragging bodies after death, and judicial reprimand.

New dishonoring punishments applied only to individual criminals, not their families. Under the monarchy, convicted persons’ family members faced direct consequences: They could not buy offices or hold positions, their property faced potential confiscation, and communities considered them equally dishonored. In 1784, lawyer Pierre-Louis Lacretelle won a prize from the Metz Academy for arguing against extending shame to families; Maximilien Robespierre took second prize with the same position. This attention reflected a fundamental shift in honor’s meaning. Montesquieu had identified honor as the monarchy’s animating principle in his 1748 Spirit of Laws, and many considered it the aristocracy’s special province. Robespierre traced family-shaming practices to honor’s inherent defects, criticizing how it valued glamour and titles over personal qualities. Yet he also denounced reserving decapitation for nobles alone, raising questions about whether he sought universal honor or honor’s abandonment.

Honor was already changing before the 1780s. The 1762 Académie Française dictionary defined honor as general virtue and probity; for women, it meant chastity and modesty. Increasingly, honor divided men from women more than aristocrats from commoners. For men, honor became linked to virtue—Montesquieu’s republican principle—with all citizens honorable if virtuous. Under the new system, honor was derived from actions, not birth. The male-female distinction carried into citizenship and punishment; women’s honor and virtue were private and domestic, men’s public. Both sexes could be shamed in punishment, but only men possessed political rights to lose.

Honor’s dilution drew satirical notice. In 1794, writer Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort, an Académie Française member, mocked the change, noting that honor now simply meant never having been a convicted criminal. The simple question of whether someone had been placed in the iron collar determined honor; only those who avoided it could gain entrance to ministries, professional bodies, academies, and sovereign courts. Chamfort, an abandoned child of unknown parents who made a literary reputation and became Louis XVI’s sister’s personal secretary, first attacked the prestigious Académie after his 1781 election, then defended it. The Académie was abolished in 1793 and revived under Napoleon. Chamfort grasped the magnitude of the change and the connection to the new penal code, where the iron collar became the lowest common denominator of lost honor. He died by suicide during the Terror.

The new penal code represented just one consequence of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The act of declaring possessed its own logic. Rights once announced raised previously unasked and unaskable questions, with declaring proving only the first step in a highly charged process continuing to the present day.