ABSTRACT
Critics of liberalism typically suggest that this is a great problem. Human identity, they argue, is deeply rooted in social relationships, and liberalism's prioritization of rights therefore impedes essential self-discovery. Law, in its most general instantiation, presumes that there is a universal human nature, marking an essential moral equivalence across all persons. It is partly on this basis that rights, variously termed natural, human, or general, may be said to be grounded. Membership in a private association is both more voluntary and less extensively constitutive of identity than is membership in a social group. Throughout the literatures on identity in cultural studies, law, political science, religion, sociology, social psychology, etc., the list remains essentially the same: race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, religion, age, nationality, and, more recently, disability. There are still remnants of the incapacity doctrine in contract law, and elsewhere, and with them the institution of various social groups.
