Rights brings together the most influential essays of the last thirty years critiquing and defending the liberal rights tradition. Modern 'rights critics' have focused on the perceived conflict between liberal rights and progressive or egalitarian political objectives, the preference of liberal states for negative over positive rights and also the dangers to community of the overly atomistic conception of human nature, which is arguably at the heart of the liberal rights tradition.

Contents: The Liberal Rights tradition: The Warren Court and the concept of a right, David Luban; Unremunerated rights: whether and how Roe should be overruled, Ronald Dworkin. Rights Critiques: Rights, Morton J. Horwitz; The politics of women's wrongs and the Bill of 'Rights': a Bicentennial perspective, Mary E. Becker; The phenomenology of rights-consciousness and the pact of the withdrawn selves, Peter Gabel; Rights in 20th-century constitutions, Mary Ann Glendon; The constitution of the procedural republic: liberal rights and civic virtues, Michael J. Sandel; Moral argument and liberal toleration: abotrion and homosexuality, Michael J. Sandel; A progressive moral case for same-sex marriage, Chai R. Feldblum; Can Canada survive the Charter?, Charles Taylor; Rights and politics, Joseph Raz. Aspirational Rights: Possibilities and Histories: Alchemical notes: reconstructing ideals from deconstructed rights, Patricia J. Williams; Constitutional scepticism, Robin L. West; Liberal individualism and liberal neutrality, Will Kymlicka; Religion, rights and difference in the early women's rights movement, Elizabeth B. Clark; 40 acres and a mule: a republican theory of minimal entitlements, Akhil Reed Amar; The first duty of government: protection, liberty and the 14th Amendment, Steven J. Heyman; The negative constitution: a critique, Susan Bandes; Taking dependency seriously: the Family and Medical Leave Act considered in light of the social organization of dependency work and gender equality, Eva Feder Kittay; The rights of statistical persons, Lisa Heinzerling. Rights Redux: The case of the Spekuncean explorers: revisited, Robin L. West and Alan M. Dershowitz; Name index.