Historically the individual has not played a large part in international law. In general the individual has tended to appear as a footnote rather than part of the main text in international legal theory. The ground for this marginalization of the individual was that international law was presented as a law for states or nations. They were the subjects who benefited from the rights enshrined in international law and they were correspondingly the carriers of the main duties. However from the middle of the twentieth century onwards there has been a big change in this regard. The emergence of international human rights regime under the aegis of the United Nations has brought the individual into international law as a significant beneficiary and so subject. The 1948 Declaration of Human Rights set this process in train but it has been supplement by a growing number of conventions dealing with inter alia: refugee rights, the prohibition of torture, the treatment of the disabled and war crimes. This paper will examine to what extent such a development represents a working out of Kantian legal theory and to what extent it may surpass it. In this context Kant's doctrine of right and in particular his concepts of innate right and cosmopolitan right will be closely examined.'
