Hundreds of millions of people live in weak states that are functionally incapable of protecting their citizens, yet few studies consider the implications of state weakness for human rights practices. Using data for 134 countries between 1984 and 2010, I construct a factor-analytic score of bureaucratic capacity and use it to analyze two categories of human rights: bodily integrity and civil liberties. Results from multivariate regression analyses show that bodily integrity outcomes improve as the quality and strength of a state’s institutions increase, independently of democracy and other key determinants. Bureaucratic capacity also promotes respect for civil liberties, but only in conjunction with executive constraints or competitive elections. When democratic mechanisms are absent, enhanced state capacity results in worse civil liberties practices. Supplementary analyses using instrumental variables rule out the possibility of reverse causality between bureaucratic capacity and human rights.