Shrines and Souls: The Reinvention of Religious Liberty and the Genesis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The thesis offers a multi-layered contextualization of the article on religious liberty in the Universal Declaration (1948). It shows how the framers broke with conventional ways of framing religious liberty in international law, by foregrounding the freedom of thought and conscience, by recognizing the right to change belief, and by limting the human rights framework to the rights of individuals.