Freedom of association is a cherished liberal value, both for classical liberals who are generally antagonistic toward government interference in the choices made by individuals, and for contemporary liberals who are more sanguine about the role of government. However, there are fundamental differences between the two viewpoints in the status that they afford to associational freedom. While classical liberals ground their support for freedom of association on the core notion of individual liberty, contemporary liberals usually (...) conceive of freedom of association as one among many values that are necessary for a liberal democracy to flourish. Which position provides a better grounding for freedom of association? The twelve essays in this volume explore the history and development of the right of free association, and discuss the limits that may legitimately be placed on this right. (shrink)

This chapter explores the contours of our freedoms to enter into and leave particular associations with particular people. The chapter highlights the fact that often our associations with each other are morally complex and, indeed, morally wrong. This moral complexity stems partly from the fact that associations are necessarily intersubjective: they affect the social needs, claims, and freedoms of at least two people. When our associations are morally wrong, we must determine whether they can be protected nonetheless by our sphere (...) of associative freedom. The chapter shows that our sphere of associative freedom depends greatly on the character and consequences of our associations (or dissociations). The chapter also shows that, under certain conditions, freedom of association is less important than other associative rights, such as the positive associative claim‐rights of utterly dependent people. (shrink)

This article shows that associative freedom is not what we tend to think it is. Contrary to standard liberal thinking, it is neither a general moral permission to choose the society most acceptable to us nor a content-insensitive claim-right akin to the other personal freedoms with which it is usually lumped such as freedom of expression and freedom of religion. It is at most (i) a highly restricted moral permission to associate subject to constraints of consent, necessity (...) and burdensomeness; (ii) a conditional moral permission not to associate provided our associative contributions are not required; and (iii) a highly constrained, content sensitive moral claim-right that protects only those wrongful associations that honour other legitimate concerns such as consent, need, harm and respect. This article also shows that associative freedom is not as valuable as we tend to think it is. It is secondary to positive associative claim-rights that protect our fundamental social needs and are pre-conditions for any associative control worth the name. (shrink)

"This collection of essays is the best one-volume introduction to a timely topic: the nature, purposes, moral justifications of (and limitations on) freedom of association in liberal democracies.

This paper seeks to examine two conflicting strands in the United States Supreme Court's treatment of “freedom of association,” by exploring some aspects of the historical development of the doctrine. It suggests that there are two conceptions of “freedom of association,” an older, traditional one, that eschews forcing odious contact on members of associations, and a newer one which privileges antidiscrimination doctrines over “freedom from association.” These two conceptions still exist on the Court, resulting (...) in irreconcilable decisions such as those permitting the Boy Scouts to exclude gay scoutmasters, but forcing the Jaycees to accept women. The preference of one conception over the other is also evident in the work of different scholars, whose doctrinal approaches are similarly irreconcilable. The Supreme Court has explained the discontinuities in the doctrine by seeking to characterize it in terms of the First Amendment's “freedom of speech” clause, but the paper argues that it makes more sense, in the context of these two cases, to regard them as related to the First Amendment's “freedom of religion” clauses. (shrink)

Freedom of association operates as an organizational "meta-norm," appreciated both as an independent value and as a touchstone for the institutional design of the International Labour Organization . Despite the renewed interest of the ILO in various aspects of the norm, its understanding of freedom of association lacks a comprehensive normative framework. This article presents such a conceptual framework and a critical in-depth analysis of current ILO freedom of association jurisprudence. Freedom of (...) class='Hi'>association should be understood in terms of equitable dialogue , a term offered and developed herein, as an understanding that is already partly embedded in ILO jurisprudence. (shrink)

Christopher Wellman has argued that legitimate states enjoy a right to freedom of association that necessarily includes a right to exclude immigrants. This paper shows that Wellman’s argument for this conclusion is unsound since it is based on a construction of collective rights that is inapplicable to the rights of a state.

Freedom of association, as I understand it, refers to the liberty a person possesses to enter into relationships with others—for any and all purposes, for a momentary or long-term duration, by contract, consent, or acquiescence. It likewise refers to the liberty to refuse to enter into such relationships or to terminate them when not otherwise compelled by one's voluntary assumption of an obligation to maintain the relationship. Freedom of association thus is a quite capacious liberty.

Freedom of association for trade union has been generally accepted as part of basic human rights in Islam. Freedom of association, which include the right to join and participate in trade union activities, can be susceptible to disputes between employers and employees as well as trade unions. Islam provides freedom of association in labour relations and also mechanisms to settle disputes pertaining to such freedom. Conciliation (sulh) and arbitration (tahkim) are both used methods (...) in the inception of Islam, which have similarities with the modern sense. We shall discuss in this article the right to dispute resolution between employers and trade unions in the context of freedom of association in labour relations as based on Shari’ah law and using modern legal systems of Islamic countries such as Iran, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia as examples. (shrink)

People sometimes use speech to interfere with other people’s speech, as in the case of a heckler sabotaging a lecture with constant interjections. Some people claim that such interference infringes upon free speech. Against this view, we argue that where competing speakers in a public forum both have an interest in speaking, free speech principles should not automatically give priority to the ‘official’ speaker. Given the ideals underlying free speech, heckling speech sometimes deserves priority. But what can we say, then, (...) about situations in which heckling clearly seems to infringe upon people’s civil liberties, in a way that intuitively justifies intervention? In such cases, we argue, heckling infringes upon people’s associative freedom. We present and defend an ethical framework for the institutional management of ‘Speech Fights’, geared around this insight. (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that private associations might be legitimately constrained by a requirement of reasonableness. I present a list of goods that freedom of association protect, and argue that the limits to associational freedom have to be sensitive to the nature of these goods. In defending this claim, I cast doubt on two popular liberal arguments: One is that attitudes cultivated in the private sphere are not likely to spill over into the public arena. The (...) other is that governmental intervention into the inner life of private associations will jeopardise attaining some associational goods. I challenge these assertions in two ways: First, I argue that the value of associations cannot be measured only in terms of the effects it has on their members. We should also pay attention to the long-term effects on society. Second, I argue that imposing some constraints on the sorts of activities associations might pursue does not necessarily threaten any associational good. These challenges are backed up by research coming from social psychology that suggests that an important part of human behaviour is automatic. I focus on the automaticity of social stereotypes and their causal effectiveness in producing behaviour. The upshot of the argument is that spillover effects are likely to happen. I argue that this is problematic for liberalism because citizens have an interest in exercising a sense of justice. The fact that racist or sexist attitudes cultivated in private spills over the public sphere provides weighty reasons to intervene in those associations. (shrink)

To ban or significantly restrict visitors for patients in hospital could seem to be simply a sensible and easy precaution to take during a pandemic: a policy that is unpopular, perhaps, and even unfortunate, but not something that wrongs anyone. However, I argue that in fact such restrictions on visitors infringe upon a fundamental right, to freedom of association. While there may still be permissible restrictions on visitors, making the case for these becomes highly demanding. One common way (...) to understand the purpose of the fundamental liberties is as protecting us from interference in a core set of freedoms, even when such interference would be to our benefit or would promote the general good. This reframing of the importance of visitors in terms of a right also has implications for how to run hospitals beyond the pandemic era: it supports a rapid expansion of visitor access and suggests that any decision to significantly restrict visitors ought not be left in the hospital, or hospital trust’s, hands. (shrink)

Corporations have increasingly turned to voluntary, multi-stakeholder governance programs to monitor workers’ rights and standards in global supply chains. This article argues that the emphasis of these programs varies significantly depending on stakeholder involvement and issue areas under examination. Corporate-influenced programs are more likely to emphasize detection of violations of minimal standards in the areas of wages, hours, and occupational safety and health because focusing on these issues provides corporations with legitimacy and reduces the risks of uncertainty created by activist (...) campaigns. In contrast, these programs are less likely to emphasize workers’ rights to form democratic and independent unions, bargain, and strike because these rights are perceived as lessening managerial control without providing firms with significant reputational value. This argument is explored by coding 805 factory audits of the Fair Labor Association between 2002 and 2010, followed by case studies of Russell Athletic in Honduras, Apple in China, and worker rights monitoring in Vietnam. (shrink)

Freedom of association holds an uneasy place in the pantheon of liberal freedoms. Whereas freedom of association and the abundant plurality of groups that accompany it have been embraced by modern and contemporary liberals, this was not always the case. Unlike more canonical freedoms of speech, press, property, petition, assembly, and religious conscience, the freedom of association was rarely extolled by classical liberal thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Indeed Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, (...) Adam Smith, and others seem to have regarded freedom of association with some trepidation because of the violent, irrational, and factional behavior of groups. This chapter illuminates these anti-associational assumptions in the writings of James Madison. Although Madison famously deplored political associations as sources of faction and civil dissension, he differed from other members of the Founding generation in his willingness to defend associational freedom. Madison's writings also shed light on the unenumerated status of the freedom of association in American constitutional law. (shrink)

Of the many questions Cécile Laborde addresses in her magisterial Liberalism’s Religion, several relate to what she describes as ‘the puzzle of exemptions’. I examine some of the issues raised by her efforts to solve that puzzle: whether her ideal of moral integrity squares with the nature of religious belief; whether we should find the case for collective religious exemptions in freedom of association and the ‘coherence interests’ of associations; how much significance we should give to the ‘competence (...) interests’ of organised religions; and by which criteria we should assess individual claims to religious exemption. (shrink)

This article defends the classical liberal view of human interactions that gives strong protection to associational freedom except in cases that involve the use of force or fraud or the exercise of monopoly power. That conception is at war with the modern antidiscrimination or human rights laws that operate in competitive markets in such vital areas as employment and housing, with respect to matters of race, sex, age, and increasingly, disability. The article further argues that using the “human rights” (...) label to boost the moral case for antidiscrimination laws gets matters exactly backwards, given that any program of forced association on one side of a status relationship (employer, not employee; landlord, not tenant) is inconsistent with any universal norm governing all individuals regardless of role in all associative arrangements. The articled also discusses the tensions that arise under current Supreme Court law, which protects associational freedom arising out of expressive activities (as in cases involving the NAACP or the Boy Scouts), but refuses to extend that protection to other forms of association, such as those involving persons with disabilities. The great vice of all these arrangements is that they cannot guarantee the stability of mandated win/lose relationships. The article further argues that a strong social consensus against discrimination is insufficient reason to coerce dissenters, given that holders of the dominant position can run their operations as they see fit even if others do otherwise. It closes with a short model human rights statute drafted in the classical liberal tradition that avoids the awkward line drawing and balancing that give rise to modern bureaucracies to enforce modern antidiscrimination laws. (shrink)

Though most legal and labor historians have depicted an American labor movement that suffered from legal disabilities, American law has never denied organized labor's freedom of association. Quite the contrary, unions have always enjoyed at least some favoritism in the law, and this status provided the essential element to their success and power. But, even during the heyday of union power (1930–47), organized labor never succeeded in gaining all of the privileges that it sought, not enough to stem (...) its current (private-sector) decline back to historically normal levels. This article provides a synoptic overview and reinterpretation of the development of American labor law. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Globalization has brought increased attention to the notion that labor rights such asfreedom of association—the right of workers to organize a union—are fundamental human rights. However, the vigorous opposition to freedom of association by US firms is largely ignored in the business ethics literature and exacerbated by compensatory corporate citizenship rating mechanisms that tend to mask labor rights deficiencies. I argue that because freedom of association is a hypernorm, instrumental to fully realizing basic human rights, (...) labor rights and human rights are largely inseparable. Thus, respect for labor rights is a non-substitutable requisite of corporate citizenship. I conclude by providing examples of corporate labor relations strategies that respect freedom of association and business firms that are leading the way. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Globalization has brought increased attention to the notion that labor rights such asfreedom of association—the right of workers to organize a union—are fundamental human rights. However, the vigorous opposition to freedom of association by US firms is largely ignored in the business ethics literature and exacerbated by compensatory corporate citizenship rating mechanisms that tend to mask labor rights deficiencies. I argue that because freedom of association is a hypernorm, instrumental to fully realizing basic human rights, (...) labor rights and human rights are largely inseparable. Thus, respect for labor rights is a non-substitutable requisite of corporate citizenship. I conclude by providing examples of corporate labor relations strategies that respect freedom of association and business firms that are leading the way. (shrink)

The idea of a constitutional freedom of association was embraced by the U.S. Supreme Court in the mid-twentieth century as implicit in the First Amendment. Although initially endorsed by the Court as a fundamental freedom that was necessarily entwined with the freedom of speech when confronted with cases in the 1930s and 1940s of local government officials cracking down on speakers and assemblies discussing strikes and labor unions, the justices were far more divided and skeptical of (...) freedom of association claims in cases from the mid-1940s through the early 1960s when state and national government officials were pursuing a variety of anticommunist measures. This article examines the early jurisprudential development of the constitutional freedom of association and its grounding in the First Amendment, and suggests some of the limits that the notion always carried with it. Politics and jurisprudence combined to limit its applicability in the anticommunism cases. (shrink)

In contrast to classical natural law theory and traditional individualist liberalism, James Luther Adams develops a version of natural law doctrine grounded in liberal religion. In its ontological dimension, his natural law doctrine is derived from a communal understanding of the character of reality. In its institutional dimension, his natural law doctrine promotes a kind of democracy in which freedom of association is central. From this perspective, law is a practice intended to empower persons through their several associations (...) in the constant formation and transformation of community under the direction of divine power. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Doctoral programs at U.S. universities play a critical role in the development of human resources both in the United States and abroad. This volume reports the results of an extensive study of U.S. research-doctorate programs in five broad fields: physical sciences and mathematics, engineering, social and behavioral sciences, biological sciences, and the humanities. Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States documents changes that have taken place in the size, structure, and quality of doctoral education since the widely used 1982 editions. This (...) update provides selected information on nearly 4,000 doctoral programs in 41 subdisciplines at 274 doctorate-granting institutions. This volume also reports the results of the National Survey of Graduate Faculty, which polled a sample of faculty for their views on the scholarly quality of program faculty and the effectiveness of doctoral programs in preparing research scholars/scientists. This much-anticipated update of such an essential reference will be useful to education administrators, university faculty, and students seeking authoritative information on doctoral programs. (shrink)

Contemporary liberal societies are seeing increasing pressure on individuals to act against their consciences. Most of the pressure is directed at freedom of religion but it also affects ethical beliefs more generally, contrary to the recognition of freedom of religion and conscience as a basic human right. I propose that freedom of dissociation, as a corollary of freedom of association, could be a practical and ethically acceptable solution to the conscience problem. I examine freedom (...) of association and explain how freedom of dissociation follows from it, showing how dissociation protects freedom of religion and conscience. Extreme cases, such as the problem of the Satanist nurse, can be handled within a dissociationist framework, so it is reasonable to think less extreme cases can also be dealt with. The serious objection that dissociationism entails unjust discrimination is answered primarily by appeal to the need for ‘full and fair access’ to goods and services by all groups. I then allay important concerns about what kind of liberal society we should want to live in. Next, I refute the charge that a dissociationist society violates liberalism's ‘higher good’, arguing that liberalism strictly does not have a higher good. I conclude with some reflections on what a dissociationist society might look like. (shrink)

Legal assessment of the provisions of the Federal Law "On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations", which contradict the Constitution of the Russian Federation and generally accepted norms of international law.

Roughly three years after the creation of his mandate, United Nations Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai reflects on the global state of assembly and association rights. Although the mandate was created against the backdrop of shrinking space for civil society, a massive and growing global protest movement has grabbed most of the headlines since 2011. Kiai argues that the mandate has made a measurable impact – it has helped raise awareness of repressive NGO laws, provided technical assistance to governments to (...) strengthen assembly and association rights and developed soft law. But perhaps, the most important work of the mandate has been its contribution to a better understanding of just how important the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association are. Assembly and association rights are a powerful tool to promote dialog, pluralism, broadmindedness, tolerance and civic participation; they satisfy people's fundamental desire to take control of their own destinies. And if anything, the past few years have taught us that the worst turmoil comes when this desire is suppressed. When people are denied something so fundamental, rage inevitably follows. When people have no outlet for that rage, it can ultimately manifest itself as something much more chaotic than a street protest. (shrink)

The new familialists argue that the decline of the intact two-parent family is responsible for our most pressing social problems and advocate public policies designed to promote family stability and discourage divorce and nonmarital births. This essay defends the freedom of intimate association and argue that family stability, while an important good, must be balanced with other goods such as equality and justice within the family, happiness, and individual self-development.