Groups, Individuals & Constitutive Rules

Public dialogue in America seems increasingly to dress claims in the garb of rights. It is an awkward basis on which to conduct a dialogue, for the absolutist character of rights claims does more to inflame passions than to evoke reason. This article explores the rhetoric of rights that surrounds the issue of affirmative action and seeks to raise the debate to a different level. The author identifies a conceptual confusion within liberalism which leads to the view that individual and group rights are in conflict. This conflict, he argues, traces to the relationship of rights and justice, and he offers a theory of constitutive justice to resolve these difficulties

Action (physics · Affirmative action · Confusion · Dilemma · Economic Justice · Epistemology · Law and economics · Liberalism · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Law, Rights, and Freedoms · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Psychology