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Group Rights v. Individual Rights: The Case of Race-Conscious Policies*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

John Edwards
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Abstract

Affirmative action and preferential treatment are group policies. Their desired effects will be on groups of people rather than on individuals. The two main purposes for such race conscious practice are to compensate for past harm and to promote greater equality of opportunity, and arguments in the debate about such practice have often marshalled ideas about group rights to compensation and equality of opportunity. Most rights-talk on the other hand is about individual rights and the idea of group rights sits uneasily with individual liberalism. This article discusses the nature of group rights and whether they can easily co-exist with individual rights in the pursuit of compensation and equality of opportunity.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , January 1994 , pp. 55 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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