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Re-Examining Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 White, Alan R., Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Stoljar, Samuel, An Analysis of Rights (London: Macmillan, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Donnelly, Jack, The Concept of Human Rights (London: Croom Helm, 1985)Google Scholar; Paul, Ellen Frankel, Miller, Fred D. and Paul, Jeffrey, eds, Human Rights (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984)Google Scholar; Waldron, Jeremy, ed., Theories of Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Frey, R. G., ed., Utility and Rights (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985).Google Scholar

2 Hohfeld, Wesley N., Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1919).Google Scholar

3 Hohfeld himself spoke of this as a ‘privilege’, but subsequent writers have generally used the term ‘liberty’ or ‘liberty-right’ as a more appropriate and less misleading way of referring to this sort of right.

4 Certain sorts of claim-right and immunity seem to afford no choice to the right-holder. Certain sorts of power are difficult for the interest theory – can we really locate the right of the judge to decide, or the right of the legislator to enact, in the ‘interests’ of those right-holders? The most conspicuous proponent of the choice theory has been H. L. A. Hart; see his ‘Are There Any Natural Rights?’, in Waldron, , ed., Theories of Rights, pp. 7790Google Scholar, and his chapter ‘Legal Rights’ in his Essays on Bentltam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 162–93.Google Scholar For statements of the interest theory, see Lyons, David, ‘Rights, Claimants and Beneficiaries’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 6 (1969), 173–85Google Scholar; MacCormick, D. N., ‘Rights in Legislation’, in Hacker, P. M. S. and Raz, J., eds, Law, Morality and Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp. 182209Google Scholar; and Raz, J., The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), Chap. 7.Google Scholar See also Waldron's discussion, Theories of Rights, pp. 912.Google Scholar For an analysis which shuns both theories, see Haksar, V., ‘The Nature of Rights’, Archiv fur Rechts und Sozialphilosophie, 64 (1978), 183202.Google Scholar

5 Stoljar, , An Analysis of Rights.Google Scholar

6 White, , Rights.Google Scholar

7 Although Joseph Raz has proposed reversing the usual order of analysis; ‘Legal Rights’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 4 (1984), 121.Google Scholar

8 Sumner, L. W., ‘Rights Denaturalized’Google Scholar, in Frey, , ed., Utility and Rights, pp. 2041.Google Scholar

9 Dworkin, Ronald, Taking Rights Seriously (London: Duckworth, 1977), pp. 169–73.Google Scholar Dworkin uses this classification in arguing that Rawls's Theory of Justice is ultimately rights-based. Rawls himself has subsequently rejected that description: ‘Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 14 (1985), 223–51, p. 236.Google Scholar

10 Mackie, J. L., ‘Can There Be a Right-Based Moral Theory?’Google Scholar, in Waldron, , ed., Theories of Rights, pp. 168–81.Google Scholar

11 Raz, J., ‘Right-Based Moralities’Google Scholar, in Waldron, , ed., Theories of Rights, pp. 182200Google Scholar, and also in Frey, , ed., Utility and Rights, pp. 4260.Google Scholar Raz's position on rights is developed more fully in his Morality of Freedom, especially Chaps 7–10.

12 Lyons, David, ‘Utility and Rights’Google Scholar, in Waldron, , ed., Theories of Rights, pp. 110–36.Google Scholar

13 Gray, John, ‘Indirect Utility and Fundamental Rights’Google Scholar, in Paul, , Miller, and Paul, , eds, Human Rights, pp. 7391.Google Scholar See also his Mill on Liberty: a Defence (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983)Google Scholar, and ‘Spencer on the Ethics of Liberty and the Limits of State Interference’, History of Political Thought, 3 (1982), 465–81.Google Scholar

14 Gibbard, Allan, ‘Utilitarianism and Human Rights’Google Scholar in Paul, , Miller, and Paul, , eds, Human Rights, pp. 92102.Google Scholar

15 Hare, R. M., Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 The only exception to this is the ‘right to equal concern and respect’. This Hare regards as a purely formal principle equivalent in meaning to the requirement of universalizability. As such it belongs to the critical level of morality but is, he argues, quite consistent with, indeed entails, preference utilitarianism (p. 154). Dworkin, the author of the phrase, would, of course, disagree.

17 Frey, R. G., ‘Act-Utilitarianism, Consequentialism, and Moral Rights’Google Scholar, in Frey, , ed., Utility and Rights, pp. 6185.Google Scholar See also his Interests and Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980)Google Scholar, and Rights, Killing ami Suffering (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).Google Scholar

18 Mackie, J. L., ‘Rights, Utility, and Universalization’Google Scholar, in Frey, , ed., Utility and Rights, pp. 86105.Google Scholar

19 For another study which puts the findings of sociobiology, as well as of game theory, to good use in elucidating the morality of rights, see Sugden, Robert, The Economics of Rights, Cooperation and Welfare (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).Google Scholar

20 Hare, R. M., ‘Rights, Utility and Universalization: Reply to J. L. Mackie’Google Scholar, in Frey, , ed., Utility and Rights, pp. 106–20.Google Scholar

21 Dworkin, , Taking Rights Seriously.Google Scholar Dworkin's thought is represented in Waldron, , ed., Theories of RightsGoogle Scholar, by a piece entitled ‘Rights as Trumps’ (pp. 153–67); that is a reduced version of his article ‘Is There a Right to Pornography?’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 1 (1981), 177212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar which is reprinted in his A Matter of Principle (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), Chap. 17.Google Scholar

22 See, for example, Hart, H. L. A., ‘Between Utility and Rights’Google Scholar, in Ryan, Alan, ed., The Idea of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 7798Google Scholar; Raz, J., ‘Professor Dworkin's Theory of Rights’, Political Studies, 26 (1978), 123–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, Marshall, ed., Ronald Dworkin and Contemporary Jurisprudence (London: Duckworth, 1983).Google Scholar

23 Dworkin, , ‘Rights as Trumps’, pp. 164–5.Google Scholar

24 Cf. Dworkin, Ronald, ‘Liberalism’, in Hampshire, Stuart, ed., Public and Private Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1978), pp. 113–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Dworkin, , A Matter of Principle, Chap. 8.Google Scholar

25 Dworkin, , Taking Rights Seriously, p. 357Google Scholar; ‘Rights as Trumps’, p. 165.Google Scholar

26 Scanlon, T. M., ‘Rights, Goals and Fairness’Google Scholar, in Waldron, , ed., Theories of Rights, pp. 137–52.Google Scholar

27 Griffin, James, ‘Towards a Substantive Theory of Rights’Google Scholar, in Frey, , ed., Utility and Rights, pp. 137–60.Google Scholar

28 Vlastos, Gregory, ‘Justice and Equality’Google Scholar, in Waldron, , ed., Theories of Rights, pp. 4176.Google Scholar

29 Gewirth, Alan, ‘The Epistemology of Human Rights’Google Scholar, in Paul, , Miller, and Paul, , eds, Human Rights, pp. 124.Google Scholar Gewirth's theory is stated more fully in his Reason and Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)Google Scholar, and in his collection of articles, Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Applications (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).Google Scholar

30 For discussions of Gewirth's theory, see the symposia in Ethics, 86 (1976), 265–87Google Scholar and in Pennock, J. Roland and Chapman, John W., eds, Human Rights (Nomos XXIII) (New York: New York University Press, 1981), pp. 148–74Google Scholar; Lomasky, Loren E., ‘Gewirth's Generation of Rights’, Philosophical Quarterly, 31 (1981), 248–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Danto, Arthur C., ‘Constructing an Epistemology of Human Rights: A Pseudo Problem?’Google Scholar, in Paul, , Miller, and Paul, , eds, Human Rights, pp. 2530.Google Scholar

31 Gewirth, Alan, ‘Action and Rights: A Reply’, Ethics, 86 (1976), 288–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Replies to Some Criticisms’ in Gewirth, , Human Rights, pp. 6778Google Scholar; ‘A Reply to Danto’, in Paul, , Miller, and Paul, , eds, Human Rights, pp. 31–4.Google Scholar

32 Stoljar, , An Analysis of Rights, Chaps. 7–10.Google Scholar

33 Ackerman, Bruce A., Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. 1980).Google Scholar

34 Donnelly, , The Concept of Human Rights, especially Chap. 3.Google Scholar

35 Narveson, Jan, ‘Contractarian Rights’Google Scholar, in Frey, , ed., Utility and Rights, pp. 161–74.Google Scholar

36 Lomasky, Loren, ‘Personal Projects as the Foundation of Basic Rights’Google Scholar, in Paul, , Miller, and Paul, , eds, Human Rights, pp. 3555.Google Scholar

37 Sartorius, Rolf, ‘Persons and Property’Google Scholar, in Frey, , ed., Utility and Rights, pp. 196214.Google Scholar

38 The diversity of forms of property and the complications that that entails for justification are well brought out in Reeve, Andrew, Property (London: Macmillan, 1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Kelley, David, ‘Life, Liberty and Property’Google Scholar, in Paul, , Miller, and Paul, , eds, Human Rights, pp. 108–18.Google Scholar

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41 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975)Google Scholar; Mack, Eric, ‘Liberty and Justice’, in Arthur, John and Shaw, William H., eds, Justice and Economic Distribution (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1978), pp. 183–93.Google Scholar

42 Ryan, Alan, ‘Utility and Ownership’Google Scholar, in Frey, , ed., Utility and Rights, pp. 175–95.Google Scholar

43 Harris, John, ‘The Survival Lottery’, Philosophy, 50 (1975), 81–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

44 Donagan, Alan, ‘The Right Not to Incriminate Oneself’Google Scholar, in Paul, , Miller, and Paul, , eds, Human Rights, pp. 137–48.Google Scholar

45 Flathman, Richard E., ‘Moderating Rights’Google Scholar, in Paul, , Miller, and Paul, , eds, Human Rights, pp. 149–71.Google Scholar

46 McCloskey, H. J., ‘Respect for Human Moral Rights versus Maximizing Good’Google Scholar, in Frey, , ed., Utility and Rights, pp. 121–36.Google Scholar

47 Ross, W. D., The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930).Google Scholar

48 Gewirth, Alan, ‘Are There Any Absolute Rights?’Google Scholar, in Waldron, , ed., Theories of Rights, pp. 91109.Google Scholar

49 Cf. Levinson, Jerrold, ‘Gewirth on Absolute Rights’, Philosophical Quarterly, 32 (1982), 73–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Gewirth's reply, ‘There Are Absolute Rights’, Philosophical Quarterly, 32 (1982), 348–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar