Abstract

The dissertation aspires to furnish an appropriate conceptual framework within which a number of outstanding problems and questions about the concept of "a right" can be approached and resolved: Are "rights" and "duties" conceptual correlatives? Does "X has a right to do p" entail "X is at liberty in respect of p"? Is acting on the basis of a right always acting rightly? Is there some normative "common denominator" of all right-assertions? The basic aim of this study is to come to an understanding of the language of rights through the isolation and clarification of a family of normative concepts that seems to play an essential role in rights-discourse. The inspiration for the approach to rights pursued here derives largely from the analysis of legal rights developed by the American jurist Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld. Hohfeldian theory has had a considerable impact upon thinking about rights; yet most treatments of Hohfeldian theory are routine and generally uncritical, with the result that not enough attention has been paid to the legitimacy of the analysis as a whole. Thus the immediate purpose of the dissertation is to provide a sustained critical assessment of Hohfeldian theory. Chapter One sets out the basics of Hohfeldian analysis and clarifies various misinterpretations and misunderstandings of Hohfeld. Chapters Two and Three then turn to the substance of the theory and attempt to elaborate and defend its central claims. Here it is argued: that to have a right is to stand in one or more of four distinctly different normative relations with others; and that, so interpreted, the relation of "right" to other important normative concepts--"duty," "liberty," "right-conduct," and so on--is far more complex than is generally supposed. Finally, Chapter Four brings the insights provided by Hohfeldian theory to bear upon the critical appraisal of two general theories of rights that have been widely endorsed by both jurists and philosophers: the theory of rights as valid claims, and the theory of rights as respected choices