If most people always wanted to do the right thing, democracies would not need to be concerned about human rights. But because you can’t trust unfettered majority rule, the purpose of human rights is, at least in part, to be a check on majority overreach.
This doesn’t mean human rights groups can be indifferent to public opinion. Shaming—the human rights movement’s central tool—won’t work if public revelation of governmental misconduct is met by approval rather than condemnation. So the human rights movement must remain attentive to shaping and sustaining sympathetic public opinion. That is true even in dictatorships, which can never rely solely on coercion to retain power. Who can quarrel with the idea, advanced by other authors in this series, that human rights groups are better off knowing what the public thinks about issues of concern?
But that straightforward proposition can also lead one astray. The relevant public for the purpose of shaming a government is often not the public at large, but a subset of the population. Unless a poll drills down to this particular sub-group, it may divert attention from the most important facts and arguments.
