What is a human right?

Consider the case of a Romanian man named Ionescu—not the absurdist playwright himself, but very much in the master's tradition—who once took the 2,000-mile bus ride from Bucharest to Madrid. His seat did not fully recline. The bus company's advertising had promised it would.

So Mr. Ionescu sued. For €90.

First he sued his way through the Romanian judiciary, including the High Court. After his appeals failed at home, he went to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France, insisting that the Romanian courts had denied him a right to a fair ...

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