The right to have rights

"Sixty years ago, the political theorist Hannah Arendt, deprived of her German citizenship as a Jew and in exile from her country, observed that before people can enjoy any of the "inalienable" Rights of Man--before there can be any specific rights to education, work, voting, and so on--there must first be such a thing as "the right to have rights." The concept received little attention at the time, but in our age of refugee crises and extra-state war, the phrase has become the center of a crucial and lively debate. Here five leading thinkers from varied disciplines--including history, law, politics, and literary studies--discuss the critical issue of the basis of rights and the meaning of radical democratic politics today"--