ABSTRACT
Membership is essential and inescapable. Even the would-be hermit may, at a minimum, be considered a member of that group of persons especially eager for social isolation. Membership is also critical to who people are as individuals. In assessing specifically the coherence of group-differentiated rights with liberal justice, people need by way of standard a substantive conception of membership reflective of liberal values. With his seminal work on the relationship between membership and justice, Michael Walzer is, perhaps, the theorist most responsible for initiating people's contemporary understanding of the idea of membership. Walzer is surely correct to see in his claim a semblance of self-determination, at least in the sense that democratic forms of governance instantiate political liberty. Within the context of differential treatment of categories of persons, liberal principles have received sustained examination particularly within contemporary debates in multicultural theory.
