A Liberal Theory of Collective Rights

Can there be a non-individualist liberalism that grounds collective rights for peoples? It is this tension-laden question to which Michel Seymour attempts to offer an affirmative response in A Liberal Theory of Collective Rights. In this book, the author presents a theory of peoples’ collective rights that consciously attempts to build upon Rawls's Political Liberalism(2005). In doing so, he joins a series of recent attempts to develop a philosophical account of collective rights that remains consistent with many liberal principles, including strong claims of individual rights. Generally, these accounts have sought to move beyond the overly constraining conclusions of Will Kymlicka's approach, which advocates for group-differentiated cultural rights but defends cultures as providing contexts of choice, and thus does not ultimately permit collective rights that might restrict individual choice (Kymlicka 1989, 1995). Like others within this movement, Seymour sees a need to recognize rights...