The Universal Ethic by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor Policy involves ethics. When we talk about economic and political policy such as tax reform or foreign policy, this involves ethics and values.
Human rights imply some moral basis for rights.
If we use the ethic of any particular individuals, cultures, or ideologies, this ethic then becomes arbitrarily imposed by force on those with different ethical views. For universal social justice, we need to use an ethic that applies universally. The two aspects of human nature that the philosopher John Locke used are independence and equality. The ethic assigns the moral values of good, evil, and neutral to all human acts. The premise of independence, that persons think and feel independently, implies that values are ultimately subjective, coming from individual desires and feelings.