Research Article| March 01 2016 Rights Talk and Political Dispositions Laura J. Collins Laura J. Collins Laura J. Collins is a doctoral candidate in Rhetoric and Writing at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg. She holds a J.D. from the Emory University School of Law. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2016) 19 (1): 83–90. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.1.0083 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Laura J. Collins; Rights Talk and Political Dispositions. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 March 2016; 19 (1): 83–90. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.1.0083 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2016 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

n American politics, we often equate rights, particularly constitutional rights, with freedom. It is as if we can discern how free we are by how well our constitutional rights are preserved. Political theorist Linda Zerilli cautions against such thinking: When rights become institutionalized, we tend to forget their origin in a radical, ungrounded claim to freedom, to non-domination and to equal participation in public affairs. We tend to become invested in securing them as such, rather than in maintaining our investment in the sometimes less stable practices that created them in the first place. 1