Liberal and Democratic Egalitarian Rights: A Critical Legal Conception

This paper defends the need for a comprehensive critique of liberalism and the liberal approach to rights from the political left, in the vein of classical critical legal theory. However, it argues that critical legal theory was limited by its frequent unwillingness to put forward a counter normative approach which could inspire interest and activism. The paper therefore concludes by sketching out a more leftist approach to rights centering on an expressivist account of human dignity.