For those interested in human rights, the year 1998 deserves to be remembered for at least two convergent reasons. Two hundred and fifty years ago, in 1748, Jeremy Bentham was born in London, and in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. Thus in 1998 we celebrated two major anniversaries: the birth of an important and influential English thinker – a philosopher, lawyer, reformer and public policy analyst – and the anniversary of the formulation of the most influential manifesto of international human rights.