The very public nature of the fight between the US president and the former head of the FBI could complicate their dispute from a legal standpoint. As this piece points out, it also masks a deeper dispute: about how much authority the Constitution grants presidents around overseeing law enforcement and prosecutions.

How do you decide where to set limits when it comes to barbarity in war? Airstrikes on hospitals – let alone chemical weapons use – are sharply raising the stakes for that discussion. 

“Every generation,” Paul Simon wrote, “throws a hero up the pop charts.” He might have been singing about political resisters. Or he might have had in mind youths like the ones in this next piece, earnest believers – though not without critics – in change from the inside.

Here’s another piece about teen self-empowerment. Two years ago, girls in a village in India’s southern Tamil Nadu state began pushing for improvements like access to books and buses. They haven’t looked back, and everyone has gained. “I know my rights as a child and as a girl, but … we didn’t stop there,” said one. “We now understand our role in our community, and we are acting on that.”

Sometimes a change in perspective can unlock a universe of possibilities. When NASA launched the Kepler space telescope into orbit in 2009, it liberated scientists from the limitations of ground-based telescopes. As a result, we can all now see ourselves in an entirely new context.

Twice within a year, President Trump has ordered missiles fired on Syria’s military for its use of chemical weapons on innocent people. In his second response on April 13, Mr. Trump doubled the number of missiles. And France and Britain joined in. Yet for this tougher defense of human rights, public reaction has been largely pessimistic. The slaughter in Syria is largely expected to continue, albeit with conventional weapons for now.

Even Trump reflected a prevailing negative view about human rights in the Middle East, the region with the most violent conflicts. “We will try to make it better, but it is a troubled place,” he said. 

Such events do seem to add to the pessimism about the protection of basic rights around the world. Journalists bemoan that humanitarian instincts have run up against hard political realities and that deliberate targeting of civilians will become a norm. Pundits point to a rise in hateful ideologies and a decline in democracy.

But does the evidence really hold up that the world faces a fallback in human rights and a rise in political violence against innocent civilians? 

Not according to a leading human rights scholar, Kathryn Sikkink of Harvard University. In her latest book, “Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century,” she presents a slew of data about progress in basic rights since the 1940s and warns against a tendency by activists and the media not to stress progress and successes. 

She says future scholars will look back on the seven decades since World War II “as a watershed in the path towards protecting human rights.” By the early 21st century, she points out, most governments had accepted human rights law, at least on paper if not in practice. Violence of one group on another has dropped since 1990. New international courts have led to a rise in accountability for genocide. The number of human rights groups keeps rising.

In 1977, only 16 countries had abolished the death penalty by law or in practice. Today more than half of all countries have done so. Since 1979, women have seen a steady increase in equality for education. Undernourishment has lessened, and so on.

Activists have been so successful that they have helped draw more attention to once invisible harms, thus creating the false impression of a worsening situation. They’ve also raised the bar on what is unacceptable, such as writing new definitions of torture and extrajudicial killings.

Because atrocities are more visible, human rights activists tend to ruminate on each violation. They absorb the suffering of victims, leading them to believe tragedies are more likely to happen, Ms. Sikkink states. And journalists who write about human rights think they look smarter by reporting mainly negative news.

Based on the evidence she has compiled, she opts for a “bias” toward the hope of human rights progress. “If people around the world come to believe that their efforts on behalf of human rights are suspect or even counterproductive and retreat to inactivity, human rights progress could indeed stall or move backward,” she writes.

Her simple request: “We need to ask not only, ‘What is wrong with human rights?’ but also, ‘What is right with human rights?’ ” 

Syria’s future is still unknown, and its progress in human rights can be uneven. Millions of civilians remain vulnerable. Yet the United States keeps thousands of troops in Syria and is rebuilding portions once ruled by Islamic State. Russia faces more problems for supporting the attacks of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. And chemical weapons may not be used again for a long time. 

Such developments always need the context of recent history, especially the history of the world’s steady momentum in recognizing each individual’s right to political freedom and a life of dignity.