The dissertation explores from different methodological and theoretical perspectives the relationship between rights and society. From the Human Development Report to a Rule of Rights and American feminists' changing understanding of abortion rights, the dissertation explores rights' syntax in various contexts. Each paper grapples with the ways rights are defined, contested, and reclaimed in distinct arenas and the role of community in those endeavors. Read in conversation; the papers reflect on how rights discourses and public spaces shape our political imagination. They argue that freedom requires not merely an individual liberation but a collective construction of a public realm, concerned with people not merely as individuals but as members of a community (or many).