The idea that citizens have a right to receive information that is relevant for their suitable exercise of political rights and liberties is well established in democratic societies. However, this right has never been systematically analyzed, thus remaining a blurry concept. This article tackles this conceptual gap by conceptualizing citizens’ right to information. After reviewing previous approaches to this idea, I locate citizens’ right to information on the map of communication rights, and put forward a systematic framework for both justifying (...) and analyzing it. This framework focuses on this right’s grounds, its function, its holders, its content, and its correlative duties. Although the conceptualization offered here will be incomplete, it will be enough to distinguish the general concept of citizens’ right to information from both its specific conceptions and from the other two best-known rights of the public: freedom of information and the public’s right to know. (shrink)

Organizations have neither a right to the vote nor a weighty right to life. We need not enfranchise Goldman Sachs. We should feel few scruples in dissolving Standard Oil. But they are not without rights altogether. We can owe it to them to keep our promises. We can owe them debts of gratitude. Thus, we can owe some things to organizations. But we cannot owe them everything we can owe to people. They seem to have a peculiar, fragmented moral status. (...) What explains this? Individualistic views explain this in terms of individualistic notions alone. Such notions don’t invoke any distinctive features of organizations. They just invoke the features of individual members of organizations. Collectivistic views, instead, explain this in terms of collective notions alone. Such notions don’t invoke the features of individual members of organizations. They just invoke the features of those organizations. We argue that neither approach works. Instead, one needs to synthesize the two approaches. Some individual interests, we think, are distinctively collective. We, as individuals, have a distinctive interest in playing a part in successful collective action. From this, so we argue, flows the apparently peculiar, fragmented moral status of organizations. (shrink)

Agents do not merely have duties – they often have directed duties to others. This paper first reveals problems with traditional attempts to equate these directed duties with claims and claim rights. It then defends a novel account of directionality that locates the unifying element of directed duties in a counterparty’s prioritization of the duties owed to her. If one agent has a directed duty to another, then the degree to which fulfilling the duty matters to the agent to whom (...) it is owed itself matters – in a distinctive, special and inherent sense. This subject-determined normative significance of directed duties can be used to articulate a priority account of directionality, an account that can demonstrate why many have taken control powers, interests or the authority to demand compliance to be so important in analyzing the directed duties we owe to others. (shrink)

This article introduces a new formulation of the interest theory of rights. The focus is on ‘Bentham’s test’, which was devised by Matthew Kramer to limit the expansiveness of the interest theory. According to the test, a party holds a right correlative to a duty only if that party stands to undergo a development that is typically detrimental if the duty is breached. The article shows how the entire interest theory can be reformulated in terms of the test. The article (...) then focuses on a further strength of the interest theory, brought to the fore by the new formulation. In any Western legal system, the tortious maltreatment of a child or a mentally disabled individual results in a compensatory duty. The interest theory can account for such duties in a simple and elegant way. The will theory, on the other hand, struggles to explain such compensatory duties unless it abandons some of its main tenets. (shrink)

The most prominent theories of rights, the Will Theory and the Interest Theory, notoriously fail to accommodate all and only rights-attributions that make sense to ordinary speakers. The Kind-Desire Theory, Leif Wenar’s recent contribution to the field, appears to fare better in this respect than any of its predecessors. The theory states that we attribute a right to an individual if she has a kind-based desire that a certain enforceable duty be fulfilled. A kind-based desire is a reason to want (...) something which one has simply in virtue of being a member of a certain kind. Rowan Cruft objects that this theory creates a puzzle about the relation between rights and respect. In particular, if rights are not grounded in aspects of the particular individuals whose rights they are, how can we sustain the intuitive notion that to violate a right is to disrespect the right-holder? I present a contractualist account of respect which reconciles the Kind-Desire Theory with the intuition that rights-violations are disrespectful. On this account, respect for a person is a matter of acknowledging her legitimate authority to make demands on the will and conduct of others. And I argue that kind-based desires authorize a person to make demands even if they do not correspond to that person’s well-being or other non-relational features. (shrink)

The ageing society poses significant challenges to Europe’s economy and society. In coming to grips with these issues, we must be aware of their ethical dimensions. Values are the heart of the European Union, as Article 1a of the Lisbon Treaty makes clear: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity…”. The notion of Europe as a community of values has various important implications, including the development of inclusion policies. A special case of exclusion concerns the (...) gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology and those without access to it, the “digital divide”, which in Europe is chiefly age-related. Policies to overcome the digital divide and, more generally speaking, e-inclusion policies addressing the ageing population raise some ethical problems. Among younger senior citizens, say those between 65 and 80 years old, the main issues are likely to be universal access to ICT and e-participation. Among the older senior citizens, say those more than 80 years old, the main issues are mental and physical deterioration and assistive technology. An approach geared towards the protection of human rights could match the different needs of senior citizens and provide concrete guidance to evaluate information technologies for them. (shrink)

We argue that the current ethical and regulatory framework for permissible risk levels in pediatric research can be helpfully understood in terms of children’s moral right to adequate protection from harm. Our analysis provides a rationale for what we propose as the highest level of permissible risk in pediatric research without the prospect of direct benefit: what we call “relatively minor” risk. We clarify the justification behind the usual standards of “minimal risk” and “a minor increase over minimal risk” and (...) explain why it is permissible to impose any risks at all on child participants who do not stand to benefit directly from enrollment in research. Finally, we illuminate some aspects of the concept of “best interests.”. (shrink)

I suggest a new role for authority and interest in the theory of right: Rights can be explicated as sets of prohibitions, permissions and commands, and they must be justified by interests. I argue as follows: (1) The two dominant theories of right—“Will Theory” and “Interest Theory”—have certain standard problems. (2) These problems are systematic: Will Theory’s criterion of the ability to enforce a duty is either false or empty outside of its original legal context, whereas Interest Theory includes in (...) the definition of a right what actually belongs to the justification of the practice within which that right is assigned. (3) I recast the connection between authority, interests and rights in a way that avoids each theory’s standard problem. (4) The resulting theory also has three further advantages: It analyzes rights in terms of very basic and familiar concepts; it mirrors the understanding of rights in actual public discourse, and it is compatible with a wide selection of moral theories. Since its core is about a specific use of modal auxiliary verbs, I call this new theory the “Modal Theory of Right.”. (shrink)

Since certain temporal aspects of the relation between duties, rights, and the interests that rights protect have not been fully theorized, a puzzle arises when we come to consider whether and how entities such as members of future generations, fetuses, deceased persons, and unconscious persons are able to possess rights. This paper evolves a unified structure for attributing the ability to possess rights to such entities. It demonstrates that while, under any cogent theory of rights-attributions, rights and duties must be (...) strictly contemporaneous, the interests that rights protect need not temporally coincide with those rights. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy about justice, a contrast between empirical and transcendental approaches can be identified. Hillel Steiner represents an empirical approach: he argues for building an account of justice-as-rights out of the minimal inductive material of psychological linguistic and moral intuitions. From this opening, he ultimately concludes that persons have original rights to self-ownership and to an initially equal share of natural resources. Emmanuel Levinas represents a transcendental approach: he argues that justice arises from a transcendent ethical relation of responsibility-for-the-Other. (...) This relation underpins all subjective cognition, and makes rationality, reasoning, and rights possible.Analysis of each of these positions reveals certain problems. On the one hand, Steiner’s argument contains a number of latent methodological, conceptual, and structural presuppositions. These include the pretheoretical concepts of “person”, “equality”, and “consistency”. These presuppositions prefigure and condition the conclusions which Steiner reaches. On the other hand, Levinas fails to provide a convincing account of how the self comes to be an object of my own deliberations about morality and justice. This amounts to an annihilation of the subject which undermines his argument for the subject as a site of responsible action. As Steiner identifies, justice encompasses equal moral agents. Levinas’s hyperbolic description of the ethical relation’s asymmetry must therefore be revised.Nevertheless, what remains is the strength of Levinas’s argument for the priority of the ethical relation over thematization, rationality, and consciousness. The hidden presuppositions supporting Steiner’s work are evidence of Levinas’s plausibility in this respect. Steiner’s account of justice-as-rights requires a prior ethical relation in which we recognise one another as separate persons, each possessing an ethical status of their own; an attitude of justice motivates Steiner’s description of justice. This attitude is evident in language, which is communication before it is thought. In that individual rights can be conceived only on the basis of a relation of responsibility, rights are primordially the rights of the Other. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

This article examines the idea of disjunctive rights—an idea first suggested by Joel Feinberg and more recently advocated by Richard Arneson. Using a hypothetical scenario to bring forward a conflict between two rights that cannot be simultaneously fulfilled, the suggestion that the conflict can be solved by describing the right-holders as holding disjunctive rights—rights that involve, in a significant way, a disjunction—is scrutinized. Several interpretations of the idea of disjunctive rights are examined from the perspectives of the interest theory and (...) will theory of rights. Ultimately, the idea of disjunctive rights fails to provide an acceptable solution to the problem at hand, as each interpretation has unacceptable implications. This conclusion challenges the compossibilist thesis, according to which moral rights do not, ultimately, conflict. Alternatively, if one wishes to keep the possibility of compossibility and disjunctive rights, the mainstream theories of rights must be revised or rejected. (shrink)

Rights dominate most modern understandings of what actions are proper and which institutions are just. Rights structure the forms of our governments, the contents of our laws, and the shape of morality as we perceive it. To accept a set of rights is to approve a distribution of freedom and authority, and so to endorse a certain view of what may, must, and must not be done.

The vast majority of gamete donations worldwide are made anonymously, and in some countries, including Spain, France, and Denmark, the anonymity of donors is explicitly protected by law. Nonetheless, a growing number of countries have called into question the morality of such practices and are enacting laws allowing children access to identifying information about their gamete donor. A significant reason for the growing legislative support for nonanonymous gamete donations is the belief that donor‐conceived children have a fundamental moral right to (...) know their genetic origins and that the right should be legally protected. A variety of factors, such as the increasing number of children born by means of gamete donation, advances in genetic science and technology that make it easy to discover the identity of a person's genetic parents, and the widespread belief that genetic information is important for protecting people's health, have made this alleged right quite salient, even leading some to challenge the ethical appropriateness of gamete donation practices altogether. Often, however, this right is assumed rather than explicitly justified. The purpose of this paper is to call into question the ethical justifications that are often thought to ground a right to know one's genetic origins.Proponents of a right to know this information usually argue that such a right protects at least three vital interests: the interest of donor‐conceived people in having strong family relationships, their health interests, and their interest in forming a healthy identity. These different interests might be protected by different aspects of the right to know one's genetic origins: knowing one's mode of conception, accessing medically relevant information, and accessing identifying information about one's genetic parents. I will discuss each of these interests and explore whether and how they might be set back by an individual's lack of access to information about his or her genetic parentage. I will also evaluate whether donor anonymity policies are, as many of their opponents argue, morally impermissible because they fail to protect these important interests. (shrink)

The twentieth century saw a vigorous debate over the nature of rights. Will theorists argued that the function of rights is to allocate domains of freedom. Interest theorists portrayed rights as defenders of well-being. Each side declared its conceptual analysis to be closer to an ordinary understanding of what rights there are, and to an ordinary understand- ing of what rights do for rightholders. Neither side could win a decisive victory, and the debate ended in a standoff.

This paper offers four arguments against a moral human right to health, two denying that the right exists and two denying that it would be very useful (even if it did exist). One of my sceptical arguments is familiar, while the other is not.The unfamiliar argument is an argument from the nature of health. Given a realistic view of health production, a dilemma arises for the human right to health. Either a state's moral duty to preserve the health of its (...) citizens is not justifiably aligned in relation to the causes of health or it does not correlate with the human right to health. It follows that no one holds a justified moral human right to health against the state.Education and herd immunity against infectious disease both illustrate this dilemma. In the former case, the state's moral duty correlates with the human right to health only if it demands too much from a cause of health; and in the latter, only if it demands nothing from a cause of health (that is, too little). (shrink)

My task here is to articulate my own novel hybrid theory of (claim-)rights, namely, the Tracking Theory of rights. While new, it has historical antecedents. There is nothing (entirely) new under the sun. Its most vivid antecedents come from the fields of epistemology, in particular Robert Nozick's work, and legal philosophy, in particular Gopal Sreenivasan's work. I am happy to stand on the shoulders of giants. Here I want to freshly articulate the theory from the ground up. So the challenge (...) will be to keep the articulation of the Tracking Theory front and centre, but, naturally, indebtedness to Nozick and Sreenivasan will be woven in at multiple junctures. My Tracking Theory will neither stand nor fall with Nozick's. The relation is more subtle. The strategy is to trade on the indubitable subtlety of Nozick's epistemology to capture the structure of a central normative concept. (shrink)

This article helps to clear up some misunderstandings about the Will Theory of rights. Section 2 briefly outlines the Theories of Rights. Section 3 elucidates some salient differences amongst self-described anti–Interest Theory accounts. Section 4 rebuts Carl Wellman’s and Arthur Ripstein’s respective arguments about the Will Theory differing from “Choice” or Kantian theories of a right. Section 5 then offers a candidate explanation of why people might subscribe to the Will Theory in the first place.

The separation-of-powers literature has entertained the possibility of differentiating governmental functions at a conceptual, pre-institutional level, as a way of defining the separation of powers. However, it can be objected that attempts at differentiating functions at this level cannot escape a problem of arbitrariness. In this article, I develop an account of the separation of powers which addresses this problem. On my account, the legislative function is defined by the creation of validity claims, understood as claims making it a matter (...) of normative common-knowledge that such and such normative attitudes hold for the interaction between agents. The executive-judicial function is defined by the specification of rights and other jural positions out of the validity claims. This account of the separation of powers has the double advantage that it works at a conceptual, pre-institutional level, and that it is able to distinguish between the functions in a non-arbitrary manner. In developing this account, I also consider its practical implications. I argue that the conceptual distinction between the legislative and the executive-judicial functions is expressive of rule-of-law values, and that this might render it a sufficient but not necessary condition for the institutional separation of powers. (shrink)

There are various grounds on which one may wish to distinguish a right to health care from a right to health. In this article, I review some old grounds before introducing some new grounds. But my central task is to argue that separating a right to health care from a right to health has objectionable consequences. I offer two main objections. The domestic objection is that separating the two rights prevents the state from fulfilling its duty to maximise the health (...) it provides each citizen from its fixed health budget. The international objection is that separating a human right to health care fails the moral requirement that, for any given moral human right, the substance to which any two right-holders are entitled be of an equal standard. (shrink)

Standard accounts of what makes exploitation wrong ground its wrong in distributive unfairness: when A exploits B he wrongs her by taking a greater share of the benefits from their interaction than he ought. I argue that this standard account does not succeed; distributive unfairness is neither the sole, nor the primary wrong of exploitation. I assume that distributive unfairness is pro tanto wrong. However, I argue that in situations where transactors’ consent to a transaction is morally valid, it is (...) also morally transformative and overrides distributive unfairness’s pro tanto wrong. Thus, wrongful exploitation requires morally invalid consent. (shrink)

The Will Theory of Rights says that having control over another’s duties grounds rights. The Will Theory has commonly been objected to on the grounds that it undergenerates right-ascriptions along three fronts. This paper systematically examines a range of positions open to the Will Theory in response to these counterexamples, while being faithful to the Will Theory’s focus on normative control. It argues that of the seemingly plausible ways the defender of the Will Theory can proceed, one cannot both be (...) faithful to the theory’s focus on normative control as the grounds of rights and achieve extensional adequacy. (shrink)

I argue that rights that protect our performance of roles are grounded in our interests in performing that role. Many of valuable roles are partly constituted by duties or obligations. Nonetheless these roles—even apparently burdensome roles—contribute to our interests. Once it is bestowed upon them, the role has special value to its bearer. Under certain conditions, the individual’s interest in performing their role is sufficient to ground rights. I conclude by briefly discussing the possibility of detached or non-committed rights attributions. (...) Within law and other systems of positive norms, role-based rights may also be attributed in a non-committed way in situations where it is believed by others that the roles in question are grounded in the interests of their bearers. (shrink)

This essay focuses on what patriotism is, as opposed to the value of patriotism. It focuses further on the basic patriotic motive: one acts with this motive if one acts on behalf of one's country as such. I first argue that pre-theoretically the basic patriotic motive is sufficient to make an act patriotic from a motivational point of view. In particular the agent need not ascribe virtues or achievements to his country nor need he feel towards it the emotions characteristic (...) of love. Why should one ever act on behalf of one's country as such, if one does not particularly admire it or feel a special affection for it? In answer to this question I offer a further articulation of the basic patriotic motive, invoking a particular understanding of what it is to be the member of a political society. Building on this articulation I then consider how one might characterize a patriotic act, a patriotic person, and the relationship of patriotism and pride. (shrink)

What is a right? What, if anything, makes rights different from other features of the normative world, such as duties, standards, rules, or principles? Do all rights serve some ultimate purpose? In addition to raising these questions, philosophers and jurists have long been aware that different senses of ‘a right’ abound. To help make sense of this diversity, and to address the above questions, they developed two types of accounts of rights: models and theories. This book explicates rights modelling and (...) theorising and scrutinises their methodological underpinnings. It then challenges this framework by showing why the theories ought to be abandoned. In addition to exploring structural concerns, the book also addresses the various ways that rights can be used. It clarifies important differences between rights exercise, enforcement, remedying, and vindication, and identifies forms of legal rights-claiming and rights-invoking outside of institutional contexts. (shrink)

The Will Theory of Rights has commonly been criticized for excluding from the class of rights bearers all subjects who are incapable of agency. The Interest Theory of Rights faces the challenge of avoiding undue proliferation of the class of rights bearers. I advance a novel argument for a specific demarcation of the class of rights bearers. I then argue that this demarcation implies that the function of the moral rights of subjects incapable of exercising agency is to protect them (...) from being treated with illegitimate disregard in a certain sense. I advance reasons for holding that this theory is neither a Will Theory nor an Interest Theory, or a combination of these theories. The proposed account is significant also if it is interpreted as a version of the Interest Theory. It brings significant benefits in the form of cohesiveness, simplicity, and intuitive appeal. (shrink)

This paper explores the value of respect for personal autonomy in relation to clearly immoral and irrational acts committed freely and intentionally by competent people. Following Berlin's distinction between two kinds of liberty and Darwall's two kinds of respect, it is argued that coercive suppression of nonautonomous, irrational, and self-harming acts of competent persons is offensive to their human dignity, but not disrespectful of personal autonomy. Irrational and immoral choices made by competent people may claim only the negative liberty to (...) be left alone. Lives disposed to autonomy are worthy of solidarity and active support in addition to the right of free choice and action. Autonomous premeditated desires (distinguished from mere consent) may embody transcendental choices, which transcend consideration of physical and psychological well-being. Choices made by incompetent persons (e.g., children and the mentally disabled) are not related to autonomy, but to self-directedness. The value of human dignity confers protection to self-directedness, but not at the expense of other vital interests. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAccording to interest theorists of rights, rights function to protect the right-holder's interests. True. But this leaves a lot unsaid. Most saliently here, it is certainly not the case that every agent who stands to benefit from performance of a duty gets to be a right-holder. For a theory to allow this to be the case—to allow for an explosion of right-holders—would be tantamount to a reductio thereof. So the challenge for interest theorists is to respect the core of the (...) interest theory while delimiting the set of right-holders in a principled manner. The foremost explicit attempt to do this has invoked Bentham's test. Predictably, invocation of this test has come under attack, with the ultimate aim of challenging the interest theory itself. My purpose in this paper is to render Bentham's test as clearly and accurately as possible. Doing so will raise issues of modality—ultimately in rendering Bentham's test's logical form. Ultimately a core attack on Bentham's test falls away, and, to that extent, the interest theory remains standing as a promising theory of rights. (shrink)

The relationship between libertarianism and state is a contested one. Despite pressing full and strict ownership of one’s person and any justly acquired goods, many libertarians have suggested ways in which a state, albeit limited, can be regarded as just. Peter Vallentyne has proposed that all plausible versions of libertarianism are compatible with what he calls ‘private-law states’. His proposal is underpinned by a particular conception of rights, which brings Interest Theory of rights and Will Theory of rights together. If (...) convincing, Vallentyne’s theory of rights enables libertarians to accommodate a limited but nevertheless coercive state that can act without the full consent of the affected citizen. In this paper, it is argued that Vallentyne’s hybrid theory of rights is implausible from a libertarian perspective as well as fails to align itself with common and deeply held moral intuitions. Hence the conflict between mainstream libertarianism and the state is not solved by Vallentyne’s proposal. (shrink)

This is a new analysis of rights, particularly of the paradigm: the claim-right. The new analysis makes better sense of rights than the leading alternatives do. The new analysis handles all of the well-known counterexamples to the Will and Interest theories; it seems not to generate counterexamples of its own; and it solves many long-standing puzzles in the theory of rights. Moreover, the central concepts of the new theory are as salient and forceful as are rights themselves.

This Article critiques the debate over the nature of rights on the grounds that theorists have failed to specify and defend an ultimate aim, predominantly deployed a standard of success–ext...

A growing number of jurisdictions hold that gamete donors must be identifiable to the children born with their eggs or sperm, on grounds that being able to know about one's genetic origins is a fundamental moral right. But the argument for that belief has not yet been adequately made.

Some version of the will theory and the interest theory of rights attempt to provide a precise and normatively neutral definition of a right that would be useful in substantive normative debates and that corresponds reasonably well with usage in our political and legal culture. But there is an irresolvable tension in this project. Consistent application of a definition of a right cannot plausible track ordinary usage without invoking underlying normative propositions about the justifications for granting rights. Thus, definitional approaches (...) to rights are too demanding to serve either the descriptive purpose of providing a neutral vocabulary or the normative purpose of usefully discussing the rights we ought to have. For descriptive purposes, it would be better to retreat, if necessary, to the Hohfeldian idea that a right is nothing more than the correlate of a duty; for normative purposes, it would be better to address directly the political justification for characterizing a particular legal as creating a right. (shrink)

The ageing society poses significant challenges to Europe’s economy and society. In coming to grips with these issues, we must be aware of their ethical dimensions. Values are the heart of the European Union, as Article 1a of the Lisbon Treaty makes clear: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity…”. The notion of Europe as a community of values has various important implications, including the development of inclusion policies. A special case of exclusion concerns the (...) gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology and those without access to it, the “digital divide”, which in Europe is chiefly age-related. Policies to overcome the digital divide and, more generally speaking, e-inclusion policies addressing the ageing population raise some ethical problems. Among younger senior citizens, say those between 65 and 80 years old, the main issues are likely to be universal access to ICT and e-participation. Among the older senior citizens, say those more than 80 years old, the main issues are mental and physical deterioration and assistive technology. An approach geared towards the protection of human rights could match the different needs of senior citizens and provide concrete guidance to evaluate information technologies for them. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTo whom is a duty owed? Contractualism answers with an interest theory of direction. As such, it faces three challenges. The Conceptual Challenge requires acknowledgment that a duty is conceptually distinct from an interest. The Extensional Challenge requires an account of cases in which one who is owed a duty does not take an interest in the duty, or does not take as much of an interest as someone who is not owed the duty. The Positivist Challenge requires explanation of (...) the great flexibility of law and other social practices in positing duties that do not reflect the landscape of moral interests. Contractualism can be shown to meet these challenges once we acknowledge the centrality of the idea of a generic interest. Focusing on generic interests also illuminates the distinctive form of respect involved in directedness. (shrink)