The Luck-Egalitarian Argument for Group Rights

Abstract

Many believe that allocating individual rights and political powers differentially on the basis of ethnicity is incompatible with the fundamental values of liberal thought. However, Will Kymlicka has presented an influential luck-egalitarian argument in favour of such ‘group rights’. I set out this argument, and then critically discuss three of its premises. I argue that:

• Membership of one’s own culture is not a supreme primary good in the sense required by Kymlicka’s argument

• Some disadvantages relating to membership of cultures reflect collective choices in a way that defeats the luck-egalitarian case for group rights

• Group rights protecting existing group cultures might be bad for equality when one takes into account the way in which such rights affect future members of the relevant minority groups.

I thank Linda Barclay, Simon Caney, Joseph Carens, Jakob Elster, Andreas Føllesdal, Nils Holtug, Sune Lægaard, Mathias Risse, Samuel Scheffler and Daniel Weinstock for helpful comments.