WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday that he was installing a human rights advisory panel in the State Department, and named a conservative law professor as its chairwoman, to review and tighten the agency’s definition of human rights and ensure it is grounded in the “nation’s founding principles” and a 1948 United Nations declaration.

The State Department already houses an internal bureau that oversees human rights issues. But the new panel, which Mr. Pompeo said would examine “the role of human rights in American foreign policy,” will not be managed by the bureau and was created without substantial input from its experts and officials.

“International institutions designed and built to protect human rights have drifted from their original mission,” Mr. Pompeo said. “As human rights claims have proliferated, some claims have come into tension with one another, provoking questions and clashes about which rights are entitled to gain respect.”

The announcement, along with a blunt commentary by Mr. Pompeo that was published in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, raised worries among human rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers that Mr. Pompeo is moving to curtail State Department advocacy for some rights, particularly ones related to women’s health and reproduction and gay and transgender issues.