ABSTRACT
This chapter returns to the task, commenced in Chapter 2, of exploring the major contributions from legal and political philosophy that inform the current project. The emphasis is now on contemporary debates and resources, that is to say jurisprudence and related literature of the late twentieth, and of the present centuries. The only exception to this is the more detailed examination here of the contribution of Wesley Hohfeld, which originally dates from a century ago (Morss 2009). Hohfeld’s contribution is particularly relevant in the context of contemporary jurisprudence of rights, including the question of group rights, especially as examined by Jeremy Waldron and by Matthew Kramer. The writings and interests of these contemporary philosophers of law and of politics are extensive and diverse. Both Waldron and Kramer have written extensively on rights, from a broadly analytic perspective. Both have written on the legitimacy of group rights. Kramer has focused more detailed attention on Hohfeld and on developing a version of legal positivism that as he sees it avoids the pitfalls of the more extreme, ‘exclusive’ versions of that tradition (Kramer 1999).
