ABSTRACT
In this chapter and the next, I shall ask how the liberal theory o f group rights fares when it is put to w ork on several pressing and important issues. These constitute problems to which every state has to provide some answer. The conventional wisdom - which in this matter is shared alike by anti liberals and liberals - holds that they pose especially difficult problems for liberalism. I shall take up in this chapter the question o f the extent to which a liberal state should permit religious bodies to violate liberal precepts in their internal organization and in the rules that they impose on their adherents. The next chapter will focus primarily on the problems generated for a liberal conception o f justice by the demands made by parents to restrict their children’s education in line with their ethnocultural or religious norms.
