This chapter considers in more detail the relationship between recognised leisure/cultural rights and the conceptualisation of leisure. It considers various leisure theories and the extent to which they have or have not recognised leisure rights, including: Marx’s concepts of the realms of necessity and of freedom; observations from the 1930s regarding the ‘new leisure’; the post-World War period (Horkheimer and Adorno, Dumazedier, Kaplan); the 1970s (Parker and Roberts in the UK, Neulinger in the USA); the 1980s, including critical and feminist theories; and the 1990s–2000s, including leisure research on citizenship rights, Rojek and Turner’s frailty theory, feminism and social justice and recent research arising from the review of the WLO Charter for Leisure. The chapter also examines the extent to which the world of leisure practice (policy-making, planning, management) has responded to the phenomenon of human rights and leisure rights in particular.