Theories of Rights Flashcards
What are the 5 main types of rights?
- Legal
- Natural
- Political
- Human
- Constitutional
What are natural rights?
Locke:
• ‘inalienable rights to life, liberty and estates’
• Legitimacy of govt = Protection of citizens’ natural rights
Blackstone:
• Right to life, security, property
Wolff:
• Right to everything needed to have a fulfilled life (e.g. liberty, food, intellectual inquiry)
What are political rights?
Rights protected through a constitution/law
E.g. American Declaration of Independence: ‘All men created equal’; ‘unalienable rights’, i.e. ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’
E.g. French Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen: All men born free and equal; Govt to preserve natural rights (liberty (i.e. power to do anything which does not cause harm), property, security, resistance to oppression)
What are the classifications of human rights?
- Civil and political rights (e.g. right to life, freedom of expression, right to vote)
- Social, economic, cultural rights (e.g. right to healthcare, education, protection of linguistic minorites)
- 3rd generation rights (e.g. right to clean environment, peace, self-determination)
What are two key descriptions of the nature of rights?
- Rights as Norms
• Rights = Rules and principles
• ‘Objective’; takes POV of the whole system, what ‘should be’ - Rights as Duties
• Rights = Obligations
• ‘Subjective’; takes POV of individuals in the system
What are some criticisms of a society that protects rights?
Burke (Conservative):
• ‘Rights of man’ inspire a rationalising POV that may destroy society’s comfortably negotiated compromise
Bentham (Utilitarian):
• ‘Natural rights’ = ‘Nonsense upon stilts’
• Gets in the way of welfare calculation for utilitarian maximisation
Marx (Marxist):
• Rights = Mutual alienation of people, prevents collective ownership
• In a functional society, people won’t seek to enforce their rights against each other
What is the translatability thesis?
“It is wrong to kill” = “I have a duty not to kill you”
What are some critiques of the translatability thesis?
- An act may be wrong, but I still might not have a duty to refrain from doing so
- That an act is wrong does not specify the target/person to whom I own an obligation
What are the 2 types of duties?
- Perfect: Duties owed to another person (i.e. person has the ability to release you from the duty)
- Imperfect: Duties owed to nobody in particular
What if the world had not rights?
Feinberg’s ‘Nowheresville’
• Imagined world without rights
(a) Presupposes social consensus about role/duty and collective enforcement
(b) Individual autonomy not seen as important
(c) Totally rigid social structure with no freedom at all
What are the 3 key theories of rights?
- Benefit theory (Bentham)
- Interest theory (MacCormick, Raz, Kramer)
- Will theory (Hart, Steiner)
Explain the benefit theory.
- Rights = Benefits (rights) gained when others fulfil their imperfect duties (burdens)
- Utilitarian POV, supports translatability thesis
- Nothing special about language of rights, just another way of expressing the content of rules
What are some issues with the benefit theory?
- What about rules conferring unclaimable benefits? (e.g. bday presents which you can’t demand, 3rd party beneficiaries under doctrine of privity)
Explain the interest theory.
- Rights = General moral interests/needs of particular importance
- Very individual-centric
What are some issues with the interest theory?
- Peremptory nature of rights: We treat rights very seriously and conclusively, but this theory doesn’t support this view; only works if there’s already a system in place to prioritise rights
- What happens in conflicts of rights?
- Rights to undesired goods: Tend not to use the language of rights for something beneficial but undesirable
