This chapter argues that there is considerable potential for contemporary legal theory to benefit from key insights and concepts in MacIntyre’s social and political theory, as laid out in After Virtue and developed in his subsequent works. In particular, the chapter advances an account of law in terms of what MacIntyre calls a ‘social practice’, drawing on his work on the relationship between reasons for action, goods and rules. The key claim is that MacIntyre-inspired legal theory can assist our insight into law as a social phenomenon, which has been a key ambition for contemporary Anglophone legal theory since H. L. A. Hart. However, not only has MacIntyre been neglected in legal theory, he has shown little interest in developing an understanding of law as a social practice. Indeed, he has expressed antipathy towards juridical modes of thought, and also lawyers, referring to them as ‘the clergy of liberalism’ in Whose Justice? Which Rationality?. Arguing for the prospects of a rapprochement, then, my chapter will both explain and challenge this mutual neglect. On the one hand, it will challenge the methodological dispositions of contemporary Anglophone legal theory, which stand against MacIntyre on the is–ought problem and the expansiveness of his enquiry. On the other hand, it will question the extremity of MacIntyre’s disposition against the practice of law within liberal societies and against the dangers of legalism for rejuvenating a communal life of virtue: not just in theory, but also in practice.

This introductory chapter identifies the key questions, themes and debates addressed within the Handbook on Natural Law and Human Rights, and provides a conceptual overview of and integrated perspective on its contents. In particular, it argues that there is a perennial relationship between human rights and the phenomenon of natural law, which is revealed when we consider how human rights claims can justify the moral demands made on other agents and on the political community. Without prior moral duties – a natural law – human rights claims are impugned by the ‘individualist fallacy’, whereby the potential value of the right to the claimant is presumed sufficient to impose overriding duties, without due consideration being paid to the constitutive social commitments necessary to make that value a matter of common concern and action. The failure to come to grips with this problem, we argue, has led to certain blindspots in contemporary human rights theory and practice. This chapter draws to a close by identifying the key benefits we see accruing from a natural law theory of human rights.

This chapter argues that an adequate account of group rights requires an embedded understanding of moral duties and rights within the context of common action for a common good. Drawing from Alasdair MacIntyre, I explain why group agency for a common good, through various social practices, grounds a framework of natural justice with correlative duties and rights, including various group moral rights. This account of natural justice is completed by an appeal to the common agency of an institutionalised political community for a political common good. I argue that human rights are a subset of moral rights, which ‘cry out’ as a matter of justice for political enforcement or realisation, whether against violations of fundamental natural law precepts or dereliction of core political responsibilities. These include group rights where the protected aspects of personal human flourishing are pursued through the common action of groups, such as families, trade unions, religious communities, and political communities. Moreover, group rights are essential to human rights – human rights presuppose the group moral right of political authority to administer justice for the common good.