Societal Perspectives in Competing Rights Policy: Law Reform Agencies and Consulting with Communities

• Author: Patricia Hughes
• Pages: 167-190

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Chapter 5

Societal Perspectives in Competing Rights

Policy: Law Reform Agencies and

Consulting with Communities

Patricia Hughes*

A. Introduction

Rights are not only legal entities. Although rights may be abstract

on paper, rights claims embody deeply held views about one’s

   

to a challenge to one’s self-identity or because one perceives

one’s status, social or economic, to be threatened. This subtext

underlying rights and rights claims means that unless we hear

          

effective and responsive ways to resolve tensions between or

among rights. Those who experience a denial of their rights have

a unique perspective on why that is the case and what needs to

be done to remedy the situation. These views may not determine

the outcome, but they are crucial to it. Yet, their claims often

affect the rights — or interests — of others and the remedy they

seek will sometimes curtail — or appear to curtail — these latter

rights or interests.1 Any determination of rights claims must

* The views expressed in this paper are those of the author alone and

should not be read to represent the views of the LCO or of anyone as-

sociated with the LCO other than the author.

1 I use the term “interests,” as well as “rights,” for two reasons. The term

“rights” denotes an interest that has acquired legal sanction, while other



The use of the term “rights” has both positive and negative connota-

tions: it is important, for example, to say “people have the right to be

Patricia Hughes

168



This paper is about the value of including communities in the

process of developing policy relating to rights, and about how

agencies that develop policy discover societal perspectives. In

developing policy the inclusion of “rights claimants” (or “societal

perspectives”) is less structured than in a legal proceeding, for

example, and may occur because of political expectations or eth-

ical mores rather than a legal requirement and may not follow a

pre-determined pattern or set of rules. These perspectives are

gathered through consultations with relevant community groups.

While the development of policy usually includes consulta-

tions with a range of different “stakeholders,” I am limiting my

consideration here to community-based groups. For my purposes,

I assume that the views of, for example, banking or industrial

interests, or similar well-established stakeholders relevant to the

development of a particular policy, will be taken into account and

that these interests will have a more or less direct or indirect

     

the way in which agencies developing policy about rights ascer-

tain the perspectives of community-based groups.

Community consultation is no longer the uni-dimensional ac-

tivity it once was, at least in certain contexts, when academics

and other researchers met with those they had decided to study.

Now there are various degrees of “inclusion,” “involvement,”

or “participation” by community members or so-called “stake-

        

community members or stakeholders expect. Consultation with

community-based groups has been the subject of new research

approaches developed over the past two decades in social re-

search conducted by academics and research agencies. Inclusion

treated with respect, to be secure, to have religious and expressive free-

dom and to receive equal (not necessarily the same) treatment,” yet the

concept of “rights” has also acquired an adversarial tone that results in

pitching rights against each other, thus the phrase “competing rights.”