Hohfeldian analysis of rights and duties. Hohfeld's Legal Relations 2019-01-08
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The Hohfeld System of Fundamental Legal Concepts
There is no mystery, after all, in having a legal right to do something morally wrong. Communitarians Taylor, Walzer, MacIntyre, Sandel sound several of the same themes in their criticisms of contemporary liberal and libertarian theories. Surely there is a juristic difference between what one may do on his own land and what one may do, outside of an agency transaction, on the land of another. For instance, I can have the power to enter into a contract with S whereby he agrees for a consideration to refrain from smoking in my presence. Critiques of rights come in two forms. Instead, the person's 'right' not to be subjected to torture is protected by the array of normative protections guaranteed by the state through the general laws against assault, trespass etc.
Hohfeld's analysis therefore provides a clear understanding as to what the legal position of S is i. University of Miami Law Review. It then presents an overview of the debates between the Interest Theory and the Will Theory of legal rights, after which it champions the Interest Theory at length. In venturing to discuss the Hohfeld System, and at various points to urge serious objections to it, the present writer is tardily responding to a wish which Professor Hohfeld himself, about a year before his death, did him the honor to express, that he make a formal statement of his views. Criticisms such as O'Neill's do not target the language of rights as a whole. He does not, therefore, say anything about the justification of rights.
How rights become imbued with this special normative force is a matter of ongoing scholarly inquiry. Consider a well-known example: a person X has a moral duty to express charitableness expressed by giving money to charity. Thus, each Hohfeldian right resolves only one issue between two specific parties. James, The Will to Believe and Human Immortality, New York: Dover, 1956. Raz, 'Legal Rights' 4 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies Oxford, 1984 J. There is no right against him e. But, suppose that we agree that the moral obligation to give to charity is a moral duty which must thus entail a moral right - does this reveal a weakness in Hohfeld's analysis? Glendon 1991, 14 here draws out some of the detrimental practical consequences of the popular connection between rights and conclusive reasons that we saw above.
Instrumental theories hold that respect for particular rights is a means for bringing about some optimal distribution of advantages. The interest theory also taps into the deeply plausible connection between holding rights and being better off. Even the most primitive social order must include rules specifying that certain individuals or groups have special permission to perform certain actions. But is it a criticism at all? The right to education, for example, weakly supports the right to a fair trial. If B has no duty, that means that B has a privilege, i. This suggests that it can be a pertinent tool for dealing with moral obligations, as well as, legal certainly in so far as this relates to charitableness.
It argues that the line of inquiry begun by Saussure, and continued by the French structuralists and post-structuralists, is not only an especially fertile way of approaching the study of legal semiotics, but that this semiotics can be more readily adapted to understanding politics and ideology as they are expressed in and disguised in legal thought. The real difficulty lies in the failure to understand the nature of a jural relation. For Mill, as for other instrumental theorists, rights are a tool for producing an optimal distribution of interests across some group. The former means that if X has a right to do P, this action must be allowed despite the fact that it may in some way be undesirable. Law It can be defended or challenged by the court of law. Conversely, Y, who is to abstain from interference, or is required to provide assistance in connection with X's project Z, is under a correlative duty to do so. This individual right to self-preservation drives the political theory at every stage of the argument and, most importantly, it is not given up; it is retained and held, even against the sovereign.
Another deleterious consequence of rights talk that Glendon picks out is its tendency to move the moral focus toward persons as rightholders, instead of toward persons as bearers of responsibilities. B can do whatever he or she pleases because B has no duty to refrain from doing it. Kramer, 'Rights Without Trimmings' in A Debate Over Rights, Philosophical Enquiries, Oxford, 1998 , pp. Each right trumps competing considerations in most circumstances, but there are certain circumstances in which another right with higher priorityâor a pressing non-right considerationâdetermines what may or should be done. When A lacks the ability to alter B's Hohfeldian incidents, then B has an immunity: B has an immunity if and only if A lacks the ability to alter B's Hohfeldian incidents. Dworkin's metaphor suggests that rights trump non-right objectives, such as increasing national wealth. Indeed, it could be argued that there is no such need and Hohfeld's stipulative analysis should be left to stand as it is unless one argues that his analysis is more than merely stipulative and perhaps one that can be taken to embody necessary truths about rights, in which case Hohfeld's analysis may serve to establish falsities in rival analyses and be validated itself.
Infinite Regress and Hohfeld: A Comment on Hillel Steinerâs âDirected Duties and Inalienable Rightsâ
Nozick centers his explanation of the moral force of individual rights on the Kantian imperative against treating humanity merely as a means to an end. Scanlon 2003, 2013 defends the position that rights are constraints on the discretion of individuals or institutions to act. For instance, consider a case in which your property right in the pie cooling on your window sill conflicts with John's right to do what he must do to keep from starving. The courts try to balance these interests, but the state traditionally is under no duty to provide for either interest. Similarly your right to sit in an empty seat in the cinema, and your right to paint your bedroom red, are also privileges.
If you have any doubt you can comment below. Conflation arises from the fact that in Kant's view of internal complexity, a single concept of a 'right' entails both permissibility Hohfeldian liberty and inviolability Hohfeldian claim-right as a correlative to duties incumbent on other specifiable persons. He tells us that the provision gives every worker a right which, in turn, gives rise to a variety of different legal protections sundry Hohfeldian entitlements and to a host of diverse legal relations. If I am right, it follows that Hohfeld's analysis of rights is an extremely pertinent tool for dealing with situations such as that contained in section 5 1 , it does not require the judge to immerse himself in the complexities of justificatory exercise or balancing of interests and is a straightforward mechanism which a judge can use to everyone's satisfaction. Simmonds in Central Issues in Jurisprudence: Justice, Law and Rights London, 1986 , p. The standard argument has been that any rights that individuals may be said to hold, fail to qualify as substantive political rights because they are not protected.
B is free because he has no duty to refrain from acting and because A has no right that he not act. The former means that if X has a right to do P, this action must be allowed despite the fact that it may in some way be undesirable. Thus, I have the power to change our legal relations in that I make S contractually bound as well as myself. Bodily and property rights are paradigmatic rights with claim-rights at their core. In part I, I set out the Hohfeldian table and present an exposition of his jural relationships. But can his analysis also apply to moral rights? Kant's View and the Conflation of Permissibility and InviolabilityKant presents another anti-Hohfeldian view whereby a conflation of permissibility and inviolability is necessary for the understanding of the nature of rights.
