Native Rights as Collective Rights: A Question of Group Self-Preservation

Abstract

In his 1972 paper commissioned by the Inquiry on the Position of the French Language and on Language Rights in Quebec, Professor Francois Chevrette questioned the legal significance of the notion of “collective rights”:The expression “collective rights” is not a term of art and it is significant both that it is found in the vocabulary of political philosophy and not found in the vocabulary of the jurist-technician. The reason is probably that the qualification “collective” attached to the word “rights” refers to the philosophical foundations of such rights much more than to their legal attributes or to their judicial implementation.