 Civil rights have often been understood by way of contrast with claims said to belong to different categories of rights: political, social, welfare and cultural, among others. Competing conceptions of civil rights have drawn the contrasts in different ways and for different purposes. To the extent that a particular contrast is used to express a view that unduly limits the scope of claims belonging to free and equal citizenship, the contrast is subject to critique and revision on the basis of a suitably capacious idea of civil rights. Such critique and revision were what led to the abandonment of the once widespread view that political rights are not civil rights. And, in the judgment of many, though not all, contemporary thinkers, welfare and cultural rights, like political rights, are essential to the freedom and equality of citizens and so ought to be counted as types of civil rights rather than as rights of an altogether different kind.