Individuals, Groups and Rights to Public Goods
University of Toronto Law Journal, Vol. 38, 1988
POSSIBLE BEARERS OF RIGHTS AND DUTIES, Vol. 3, Carl Wellman, ed., Routledge, 2002
GROUP RIGHTS, Peter Jones, ed., Ashgate Publishing, 2008
Posted: 27 Jul 2011 Last revised: 28 Jul 2011
Date Written: 1988
Abstract
Are there any rights to public goods? Can they be claimed by individuals? Recent literature has elided these two questions and reached a skeptical conclusion. This oversimplifies the issue. The difficulty with individual rights claims in respect of public goods has to do less with the public nature of the good than with whether the good is participatory by nature; some but not all public goods are participatory. Thus individual rights claims to some public goods may be valid under certain circumstances. However, groups rather than individuals must hold any rights that may validly be claimed in respect of participatory public goods.
Keywords: Individual Rights, Group Rights, Rights to Public Goods
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation