Our further understanding of rights depends on the further understanding of Hohfeld's right-duty links, and we have seen that in principle three approaches to this development are available: that rights may be understood as prior to duties; that duties may be understood as prior to rights; or that rights and duties may be mutually supporting.

The next step is to investigate and organize our understanding of rights and duties in these terms. In moving away from the question of what rights and duties metaphysically “really are” to the question of what our actual social practices disclose that they are, we are not escaping difficulties. After all, there is not a clear answer to the question of what “our social practices” say that rights and duties are. Is there a homogeneous “we” here? Are views held in the present more authoritative on this than views held in the past? Even if the “we” is interpreted as referring to some legally and morally educated or practising group within a particular jurisdiction or society during a particular period, a range of viewpoints will be disclosed. Or should we take a statistical survey of what people mean, and go with the majority? We do not seek such a survey, but rather seek what might be seen as “best practice”, and we recognize this through the quality of its justification. It is for this reason that it is common in philosophy to select a particular theorist as authoritatively expressing “the view” from a particular time or place.