Rights

Characteristics of Rights
⚫ The holder of the right
⚫ The act of forbearance
⚫ The res (object of the right)
⚫ Tangible object?
⚫ Intangible but valuable?
⚫ Person?
⚫ The person bound by the duty
⚫ Title to the right
⚫ Enforceability
⚫ Time barred debt
⚫ Right may mean a number of different things
⚫ Moral
⚫ Political
⚫ Economic
⚫ Legal
⚫ Wesley Newcombe Hohfeld (1879-1917)
⚫ Fundamental Legal Conceptions Applied to Judicial
Reasoning (1919)
⚫ Explained the lowest common denominators of law –
basic legal conceptions – he found 8
⚫ Right – an enforceable claim to performance, action or
forbearance by another

⚫ Duty – the legal relation of a person who is commanded

by society to act or forbear for the benefit of another
person either immediately or in the future, and who will be
penalised by the society for disobedience
⚫ Privilege – the legal relation of A and B when A with
respect to B is free or at a liberty to conduct himself in a
certain manner as he pleases; when his conduct is not
regulated for the benefit of B by the command of society,
and when he is not threatened by any penalty for
disobedience

⚫ No right – the legal relation of a person on whose behalf

society is not commanding some particular conduct of
another
⚫ Right against self incrimination

⚫ Right to marry
⚫ Power – the legal relation of A and B when A’s own
voluntary act will cause new legal relations either between
B and A or between A and a third person

⚫ Liability – the relation of A and B when A may be brought

into new legal relations by the voluntary act of B
⚫ Immunity – the relation of A and B when B has no legal
power to affect one or more of the existing legal relations
of A

⚫ Disability - the relation of A and B when by no voluntary

act of his own can A extinguish one or more of the
existing legal relations of B
Contradictories, Correlatives and Opposites

Right Privilege

Duty No-Right

Power Immunity

Liability Disability
⚫ Correlatives always exist together – one person has a right
the other has a duty
⚫ Contradictories – when one is held by one person then
another lacks its contradictory – if A has power B cannot
have immunity
⚫ Opposites can never be held by one person at the same
time – one has a privilege with respect to a subject he
cannot simultaneously be subject to a duty – Thus right in
X implies absence of liberty in himself
Four basic rights - LCD
⚫ Right – claim rights
⚫ Privilege – that are in fact liberties
⚫ Power – ability to create change in legal relations with
another
⚫ Immunity – rights protecting persons from interference in
a specific way
• Positive Rights correspond to a positive duty – right to be
positively benefited
• Negative rights correspond to a negative duty – right not to be
harmed

• It is easy to and necessary for the law to prevent infliction of

harm (right not to be pushed into the water)

• Than to enforce positive beneficience (right to be pulled out of

water, if at all there is only against determinate people)

• Hence liability for hurtful acts towards others is the general

rule whereas liability for acts of omission is an exception.
⚫ First order rights are legal rights directly over property
⚫ Second order rights are legal rights concerning the
alteration of these first order rights. For eg. Power to
waive the claim (granting others permission to touch the
computer), annul the claim (abandoning the computer) or
transfer the claim (making the computer into someone
else's property). Your immunity prevents others from
altering your first order claims.
 POWER IMMUNITY Second order
To waive, annul, or transfer Against others altering your Rights over the first order
your rights

PRIVILEGE CLAIM First order

To use the computer Against others using the Rights over the computer
computer