There is much that is right with rights: paradigmatically, a right is a social institution designed to secure an important element of the human good; the phenomenon of a right is universal, but its forms vary according to social priorities and resources; it can promote social flourishing; and it offers a powerful means of holding states to account. However, contemporary rights-talk suffers from a number of problems: the idea that rights are ethically fundamental, rather than the conclusion of all-things-considered ethical deliberation; the refusal in practice to recognise the political and economic contingency of human rights; the imprudence of judges in presuming to invent ethically and politically controversial rights; and rights advocacy that refuses to acknowledge the need for political trade-offs or compromises. These problems have the ill effect of obscuring the importance of the formation of civic virtue, subverting the authority and credibility of rights, corroding military effectiveness, undermining the democratic legitimacy of law, and proliferating publicly expensive rights. The solution to these problems lies in the abandonment of rights-fundamentalism by judges and human rights advocates, and by the general recovery of a richer public discourse about ethics, one which includes talk about the duty and virtue of rights-holders.