ABSTRACT
Seyla Benhabib's The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens aimed to make a theoretically and empirically substantiated argument for re-conceptualizing the boundaries of political membership in liberal democracies. She intended to make a persuasive case for recognizing the right to membership as a human right. Benhabib attempted to reconcile the tension between the universal norm of equality of all persons versus real equality being embedded in communities, where such norms may not be fully realized for all persons equally. Benhabib examined political membership from the point of view of discourse ethics and deliberative democracy. Benhabib fulfilled her overall objective, putting forward an impassioned argument in defense of the right to just membership and setting out in clear terms what this might entail in liberal democracies. Benhabib fulfilled her overall objective, putting forward an impassioned argument in defense of the right to just membership and setting out in clear terms what this might entail in liberal democracies.
