Introduction

Summary

This is a book about rights. It is, to be more specific, a book about the place of rights in American political debate. The language of rights has been central to American political culture for centuries, and nearly every major issue in American political history has been argued as an issue of rights. In some circles, however, rights have recently fallen upon hard times. It has become a familiar refrain in politics that America is a land of too many rights and too few responsibilities. In the academy, the concept of rights today attracts criticism that is both serious and diverse. The critical legal studies movement charges that a rights-based political order is intellectually incoherent and morally pernicious, the former because rights conflict with one another and the latter because a system of rights entrenches the power of the privileged classes. Communitarians contend that framing political debate in terms of rights leads to excessive individualism, unwillingness to compromise, and the decline of community spirit. These two schools of thought differ in many important ways, but their different critiques of rights share the idea that the substance of American politics is conditioned by the fact that it speaks the language of rights. To some extent, that observation must be valid. Because language is often a constituent element of thought, belief, and action, political activity from legislative drafting to electioneering to international diplomacy relies upon and is shaped by the language that mediates and helps constitute the political world.