This handbook is the most authoritative, comprehensive, and up-to-date edited collection on the philosophy of rights. It seeks not only to cover important existing terrain in rights theory, but to break new ground, sometimes on hotly contested issues. 

Written by leading experts in the field, the chapters reflect the intellectual excitement of the current debates. To that end, many different and sometimes conflicting views are presented, covering a wide range of topics that continue to bear on how we talk and think about rights. The ideas of numerous influential theorists (past and present) are also examined and discussed. 

The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Rights has five parts:

• Part 1 (History and Geography of Rights) explores how rights figured importantly in different historical traditions and schools of thought, both Western and beyond.
• Part 2 (Theories of Hohfeldian Claims) spotlights the central contemporary theories that focus on rights as such, asking precisely what they amount to. This Part is the theoretical heart of the handbook and includes focused attention to the long opposed will and interest theories, along with more recent developments.
• Part 3 (Rights in Moral Theory) focuses on rights in moral theory and practice, including such topics as how moral rights relate to wronging, and whether they can conflict.
• Part 4 (Rights and the Law) examines the notion of rights in legal practice.
• The concluding Part 5 (Who or What can be a Right-Holder?) explores how wide and varied the class of rights-holders might be.

The handbook covers several important if less frequently discussed themes, including Islamic and Confucian perspectives, demand-rights, hybrid rights theories, rights of redress, the institutional critique of legal rights, and the nature and scope of children’s rights.

The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Rights is essential reading for all scholars, researchers, and advanced students of the philosophy of rights. It is also ideal for scholars of jurisprudence and moral philosophy.

Margaret Gilbert is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of nine books including Rights and Demands: A Foundational Inquiry (2018).

Jeffrey Helmreich is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of California, Irvine. His work has appeared in journals such as Philosophy and Public Affairs, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research and The Journal of Tort Law.

Gopal Sreenivasan is the Lester Crown University Distinguished Professor of Ethics at Duke University. He is the author of three books, including Rights and Human Rights (2027).