Attitudes towards Individual and Minority Rights: The Promise of Empowerment or the Specter of Erosion of Social Trust and Social Solidarity?

As the "rights revolution" and more generally" adversarial legalism" begin to take hold in Europe, fundamental questions with regard to the effects, real and imagined, of the juridification of politics has begun to emerge. Conflicts appear where individual and minority rights, claimable in the courts, are pitted against general or "social" rights that are fundamentally collective and politically determined in such a way that the good of the nation as a whole, as decided in the parliament, trumps the demands of individuals and special interests. The solidaristic logic of the universalistic welfare state clashes, at least potentially, with the demands for protection and empowerment of individuals and minorities. Based on the recently completed collection of comparative survey data, this paper will address the attitudes towards the rise of legal rights that protect individuals and minorities in Germany and the US. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]