The book aims at offering an overview of the current human rights practice, indicating some main specific features able to provide a meaningful explanation of the complex phenomenon. It attempts to highlight its moral, social and legal dimensions, its theoretical and institutional origin, but also the specificity of the current phase of the protection of rights, and its uses in the domestic and international domain. It aims at showing the connection between the idea of law as a social practice and the practice of human rights, the former working as explanatory framework, the latter characterised by specific features.