This volume brings together the central works of recent scholarship on the nature of rights, with contributions by some of the most prominent contemporary theorists in moral, legal, and political philosophy. With approaches ranging from the political to the historical, and from the analytical to the critical, this collection touches on the major conceptual and practical questions of this important field and also offers useful introductions to emerging issues in rights theory.

Contents: Introduction; Part I Rights in Context: Natural law and natural rights, Morton J. Horwitz; 'Protestant' political theory and the significance of rights, Sean Coyle; Human rights in the emerging world order, Joseph Raz; Humanist and political perspectives on human rights, Pablo Gilabert. Part II Concepts of Rights: Are there still any natural rights?, Hillel Steiner; Value pluralism and the two concepts of rights, Horacio Spector; The analytical foundations of justice, N.E. Simmonds; Fundamental legal conceptions reconsidered, Andrew Halpin; Ross and Olivecrona on rights, Brian H. Bix; A right to do wrong? Two conceptions of moral rights, William A. Edmundson; The nature of rights, Leif Wenar; Theories of rights: is there a third way?, Matthew H. Kramer and Hillel Steiner. Part III Bipolarity of Rights: Bipolar obligation, Stephen Darwall; Giving claim-rights their due, Margaret Gilbert; The nature of rights debate rests on a mistake, Siegfried van Duffel; Duties and their direction, Gopal Sreenivasan. Part IV Rights and Reasons: What demands are rights? An investigation into the relation between rights and reasons, Alon Harel; Rights and recognition, David Lyons; The rights recognition thesis: defending and extending Green, Gerald F. Gaus. Part V Conflicts of Rights: On conflicts between rights, Christopher Heath Wellman; American balancing and German proportionality: the historical origins, Moshe Cohen-Eliya and Iddo Porat; Security and liberty: the image of balance, Jeremy Waldron; Proportionality stricto sensu (balancing), Aharon Barak; The weight formula, Robert Alexy; On Robert Alexy's weight formula for weighing and balancing, Lars Lindahl; Name index.