 Status theory also faces the challenge of vindicating its foundations and its scope. Why after all is it “fitting” to ascribe individuals rights? The Kantian value of inviolability can look puzzling when presented independently of a metaphysical grounding. As Nagel (2002, 34) admits, “it has proven extremely difficult to account for such a basic, individualized value such that it becomes morally intelligible.” This is a quiet echo of Bentham’s protest that the doctrine of natural rights “is from beginning to end so much flat assertion: it lays down as a fundamental and inviolable principle whatever is in dispute” (Bentham 1796, 66). Cruft (2010, 451) has attempted to deepen the theory of the non-instrumental value of basic rights, by showing that such rights are constitutive of “relationships that bind all humans together in fellowship as members of a shared-proto-community.”