Social Choice of Individual and Group Rights

Individual rights can generally be respected if and, except in rare special cases, only if they apply to independent components of a Cartesian product space of social states, and also each individual is indifferent to how others exercise their rights. This is true whether or not the Pareto criterion is satisfied. Group rights can also be respected if they apply to the independent components for the different individual members of the group. This holds not only for social choice rules, but also for outcomes that arise when individuals and groups use equilibrium strategies in some game form. So only exceptionally is it possible to respect all rights. The paper concludes by considering different ways of including rights in the social states which are the object of individual preference and of social choice. Social Choice of Rights