Do Groups Have Rights, or Only People?

The Club That Never Dies

Imagine a football club founded in 1874. Over 150 years, every single player, coach, and fan has been replaced. Yet the club still owns its stadium, its name, and its place in the league. If a rival tries to steal the club’s crest or force it out of the competition, who exactly is being wronged? The current players? The long-gone founders? Or the club itself?

Philosophers ask a similar question about groups of all kinds: nations, indigenous peoples, language communities, churches, universities, and corporations. Can a group have rights that belong to the group as a whole, not just to the individual people inside it? This is the puzzle of group rights.

A group right is a right held by the group as a group rather than by its members one by one. For example, many people believe that a nation has a right to govern itself—a right of self‑determination. If that right exists, it belongs to the nation as a collective unit, not simply to each citizen individually. Other commonly claimed group rights include a cultural group’s right to have its traditions respected, a linguistic minority’s right to use its language in public, and a religious community’s right to worship together freely.

It’s easy to confuse group rights with rights that people hold because they belong to a group. If you are a member of a library, you have the right to borrow books—but that is an individual right. You, as one person, hold that entitlement. Philosopher Will Kymlicka (born 1962) drew a useful distinction: some rights are group‑differentiated—they are granted to a particular group but not to everyone in the larger society. For instance, an indigenous minority might have special fishing rights. However, a group‑differentiated right can still be an individual right: each member of the minority holds the right separately. A genuine group right in the philosophical sense would be a right the group possesses as a single entity, not a bundle of individual rights.

This matters because if we say a group has a moral right, we are claiming that the group itself is a bearer of moral standing, like a person. That raises the question: what kind of group could possibly be a right‑holder?

What Makes a Group More Than a Bunch of People?

Not every collection of people is a candidate for group rights. A crowd waiting for a bus, all left‑handed people, or everyone earning a middle income—these are what philosopher Peter French (born 1941) called aggregate collectivities. They are mere sums of individuals. If we assigned rights to them, those rights would simply be the rights of each person added together.

But some groups have an identity that is not just the sum of their current members. French called these conglomerate collectivities. A conglomerate has an internal structure: rules, offices, and decision‑making procedures. Examples include a political party, a university faculty, or a business corporation. When one person leaves and another joins, the group remains the same entity. It can own property, sign contracts, and be held responsible for its actions. For French, that kind of enduring integrity is a minimum requirement for right‑holding.

Similarly, philosopher Dwight Newman (21st century) distinguishes between a mere set—which becomes a different group each time its membership changes—and a collectivity, which stays identifiable over time. A nation, for instance, is often thought of as one continuous people stretching across generations, not just the citizens alive today. Even if the nation has no state, like the Kurds or, for long periods, the Poles, people still speak of its historic rights over land.

Some thinkers argue that what really makes a group a single moral entity is its members’ shared feeling of belonging. Marlies Galenkamp (20th century) and Michael McDonald (20th century) stressed that strong internal solidarity and a shared understanding of being bound together—not just formal structure—create a group capable of bearing rights. Larry May (born 1952) and Paul Sheehy (20th–21st century) added that the web of relationships among members can generate common interests that are more than individual interests simply piled up.

So, a group that might hold rights needs real unity—through organization, shared identity, or committed relationships. But even with that unity, does it have the right features to be a right‑holder? Here philosophers divide sharply.

Can a Group Act and Choose?

Two rival theories of rights dominate the debate. The choice theory (or will theory) says that to have a right you must be able to make choices about it—you must be capable of exercising control, of waiving or demanding the duty. Rights belong only to beings that can act intentionally. The interest theory says that rights protect a being’s well‑being; what matters is that the right‑holder has interests strong enough to place duties on others.

If we apply the choice theory, only groups that can function as agents—able to form goals, make rational plans, and respond to criticism—could qualify for rights. French argued that conglomerate groups like corporations have internal decision structures that let them act intentionally and should therefore be treated as full moral persons with rights and responsibilities. More recently, Christian List (born 1973) and Philip Pettit (born 1945) developed the idea of group agents. A group can have beliefs and desires at the group level that cannot be reduced to the beliefs and desires of individual members. A corporation’s decision to pollute, for instance, may not be traceable to any single person’s choice, yet the group as a whole can be held responsible. For List and Pettit, being a person in the moral sense is a matter of what you can do—namely, participate in systems of obligations, make promises, and be held accountable. Since group agents can do that, they deserve rights, though fewer than natural human persons.

But requiring agency limits group rights sharply. Groups like ethnic or linguistic communities that lack formal decision‑making structures would not count as agents. On the choice theory, they could not have rights as groups. Adina Preda (21st century) holds that only organized groups with collective decision procedures can be right‑holders.

Interest theory opens the door much wider. A group may not be an agent but can still be a moral patient—it can be harmed, or its well‑being can be set back. Keith Graham (20th–21st century) pointed out that a group does not need to act to flourish or suffer. Dwight Newman’s interest‑based account argues that a collectivity can have interests as a collectivity—interests that are not just the aggregated interests of individual members. When those group interests are weighty enough, they can justify placing duties on others, which means the group has rights. Joseph Raz (1939–2022), a leading interest theorist, provided a famous formula: X has a right if an aspect of X’s well‑being is a sufficient reason to hold others to be under a duty. Applied to groups, a linguistic minority might have a right to have its language supported if the group’s interest in language preservation is strong enough.

Two Ways to See a Group Right

So far, we have assumed that if a group has a right, the group itself is a single entity that holds it—like a person, only bigger. That is the corporate conception of group rights: “its” right. But there is another way of thinking about it.

On the collective conception, a group right is a right held jointly by all the individuals who make up the group, but not by any one of them alone. It is “their” right, not “its” right. The group does not need to be a separate moral being. The moral standing that grounds the right belongs to the individual members together.

Joseph Raz’s conditions for a collective right illustrate this. He said a collective right exists when (1) an interest of human beings justifies a duty; (2) those interests are interests of individuals as members of a group in a public good; and (3) no single member’s interest in that good is enough by itself to justify the duty. Imagine a city where heavy traffic endangers walkers. Each pedestrian has an interest in a network of safe walkways, but one person’s interest is too small to force the city to build them. Yet if the shared interest of all pedestrians is strong enough, the pedestrians together might have a collective right to the walkways. The right is held jointly, grounded in aggregated individual interests.

This collective approach can handle goods that are necessarily enjoyed together, like a shared culture or a common language. You cannot have a living language all by yourself; it requires a community. But even here, the interests that ground the right can still be understood as the interests of the individual speakers—just held together. The collective conception avoids giving a group an irreducible moral status separate from its members, which makes it less vulnerable to the objection that groups are not “real” entities.

Yet the collective conception has limits. Sometimes a group’s interest seems to come first, and members share in it only because they belong. A football club’s aim to win championships generates an interest for the club as a club; players have that interest as members. In such cases, it may be more natural to think of the club—not the collection of players—as the right‑holder. Also, if rights are held jointly by a specific set of individuals, every change in membership would technically change the right‑holding group, which feels odd when we think of a nation’s centuries‑old claim to land. Still, both the corporate and collective ideas can coexist; we need not pick one for all cases.

Why Some Philosophers Worry About Group Rights

Skeptics attack the very idea of group rights. Many believe that only individual human beings can have rights. “Groups do not feel anything,” a critic might say; “only individuals can decide, value, or reason.” Michael Hartney (20th century) defended value‑individualism: the view that only the lives of individual human beings have ultimate value. If he is right, collective entities have no independent moral standing, and group rights in the corporate sense are impossible. Groups are just collections of individuals, and whatever rights they seem to have can always be reduced to individual rights.

But even if we accept group rights, many fear their consequences. One worry is that a group right can give a group power over its own members. If a cultural group’s right to protect its traditions is taken too broadly, the group’s leaders might use it to silence dissenters or keep women in subordinate roles. This is the problem of minorities within minorities. Will Kymlicka, though sympathetic to cultural rights, insists that group rights should not be used to restrict insiders; they should be shields against outside interference, not swords against members.

Another concern is that group rights will override individual rights in a dangerous way. Imagine a huge corporation’s right to free speech clashing with an individual’s right to privacy. Because groups can be very powerful, giving them rights might let Goliath crush David. That is why List and Pettit, despite calling group agents persons, argue that their rights must be strictly limited and must serve the ultimate well‑being of individual human beings.

Yet some philosophers point to goods that can only exist as shared experiences—what Denise Réaume (20th–21st century) called participatory goods. Friendship, a team sport, a vibrant culture, or collective worship are valuable precisely because they are enjoyed together. If those goods are important enough to generate rights, the rights may have to belong to the group, because no individual can claim the whole shared activity as theirs alone. Réaume argued that such rights should protect the group from outside interference, not force insiders to participate unwillingly.

So, while worries are real, they do not automatically kill the case for group rights. It all depends on which rights we grant, to which groups, and with what safeguards for individuals.

Why It Still Matters

You might not be a nation or a multinational company, but you belong to groups that matter: a sports team, a band, a cultural community, or a faith congregation. Whenever people demand that their language be taught in school, that their people’s land be returned, or that their club be recognized as a legal entity, they are relying on the idea of group rights—whether they know it or not.

International law already treats group rights as real. The United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) declares that indigenous peoples have rights to their lands, cultures, and self‑government. Treaties on civil, political, economic, and social rights say that “all peoples have the right of self‑determination.” Courts routinely treat corporations as legal persons that can sue and be sued. These are not just philosophical ideas; they shape actual lives.

Yet the philosophical debate is not settled. Should we think of those rights as belonging to the group as a corporate entity, or to the individuals together? That choice determines whether we can criticize a legal system for failing to protect a group’s rights on purely moral grounds, or whether we must accept that only individuals are the ultimate right‑holders. It also affects how we balance group claims against individual freedoms within the group.

Next time your club votes on a rule, or your team defends its home ground, or your community asks for official recognition, you might ask yourself: does the group itself have a moral claim that none of us has alone? The answer will shape the laws and conflicts of your generation.

Think about it

1. If a football club’s right to use its team name belongs to the club itself and not to the players, could the club sue a rival team even if every current player thinks that’s unfair? Who should decide?
2. A language is spoken by only fifty people. They all want government funding for a school to keep the language alive. Is their claim stronger if we call it a group right rather than fifty separate rights? Why or why not?
3. Corporations are groups, and in many countries they have the right to spend money on political ads. Would you set limits on that right to protect individual citizens’ voices? How would you justify your answer?