Individual Rights as Social Rights
| Author | Russell Keat |
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663915617860c |
| Subject Matter | Dialogue and Debate |
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Individual Rights as
Social Rights
Russell Keat
University of Edinburgh, UK
Fernando Atria argues that the radical potential of social (or positive) rights is under-
mined when they are (mis)understood as differing from individual)or negative) rights
only in their specific content and not in their basic character. Individual rights, he says,
are essentially tied to a contractualist model of politics and society, according to which
the purpose of legal and political institutions is to protect the interests that individuals
already have, prior to such institutions. By contrast, social rights – when properly under-
stood – presuppose social cooperation and the recognition of reciprocal duties (by mem-
bers of a political community who see each other as equals).
Liberal/neo-liberal theorists insist that only individual rights shouldbe constitutionally
guaranteed or otherwise protectedby the state, arguing that there arestructural differences
between these and (the so-called) social rights. Their leftist/progressive critics deny there
are any such structural differencesand argue for social rightsbeing accorded a similar con-
stitutional status. But this, argues Atria, is a serious theoretical and political mistake.
Transformedinto the justiciable rightsof bourgeois law, social rights (e.g.to education and
healthcare) lose their oppositional character and take on that of individual rights.
Thus, Atria wishes to protect social rights from their damaging assimilation to indi-
vidual rights. But his argument depends on accepting the understanding of individual
rights provided by their liberal/neo-liberal proponents, when they are better understood,
618 Social & Legal Studies 24(4)
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