The Good, the Bad, and the Intolerable: Minority Group Rights

In: Dissent: a journal devoted to radical ideas and the values of socialism and democracy, Band 43, S. 22-30

Abstract

Those opposed to the language of group rights focus on what they perceive to be a new & dangerous trend that threatens to treat individuals as mere carriers of group identity & subordinate individual freedom to group claims. But as the consistent historical demands of the indigenous people of North America clearly demonstrate, the issue of group rights is an enduring one & related language can help strengthen human rights by responding to potential injustices that the traditional individual rights doctrine has failed to address. How liberal democracies might differentiate among good, bad, & intolerable group rights is also considered. M. Maguire