Critics have been uncomfortable with liberalism’s conception of law as rights, contending that liberals establish the rights of individuals without regard for the good of society. Liberals, it is said, think of individual rights as pre-political. Thus the modern conception of human rights is dissociated from the aims of society, resulting in a separation between rights and responsibilities. The liberal conception can justify rights against society, but it cannot justify obligations to the public realm. From this, critics charge, follows the decadence of modernity: public morality, social responsibility, even the motivational foundation for public democratic action must be sacrificed at the altar of the liberal conception of human rights.