The principle of fairness holds that individuals (beneficiaries) who benefit from a cooperative scheme of others (cooperators) have an obligation to do their share in return for their benefit. The original proponent of this principle, H. L. A. Hart suggests ‘mutuality of restrictions’ as a moral basis because it is fair to mutually restrict the freedom of both beneficiaries and cooperators; so called the fairness obligation. This paper explores ‘mutuality of restrictions’, which is interpreted as a right-based and an equality-based (...) justification of the fairness obligation. It is not argued whether both ways of justifying the obligation makes a success, but that they are in need of presupposing that there is a duty for beneficiaries to do their share in return for their benefit. This suggests turning to a duty-based justification of the fairness obligation. (shrink)

Argues, against Anscombe, that Aristotle had the concept of morality as an interpersonal normative order: morality is justice in general. For an action to be wrong is not for it to warrant blame, or to wrong another person, but to be something one should not do that one has no right to do. In the absence of rights, morality makes no sense.

Rights to do wrong are not necessary even within the framework of interest-based rights aimed at preserving autonomy. Agents can make morally significant choices and develop their moral character without a right to do wrong, so long as we allow that there can be moral variation within the set of actions that an agent is permitted to perform. Agents can also engage in non-trivial self-constitution in choosing between morally indifferent options, so long as there is adequate non-moral variation among the (...) alternatives. The stubborn intuition that individuals have a right to do wrong in some cases can be explained as stemming from a cautionary principle motivated by the asymmetry between the risk of wrongly interfering and that of refraining from interfering. (shrink)

Universities are facing a critical challenge; university citizenship has steadily declined over the last few decades. As a self-governing entity, most of the foundational elements of a university community are within its own control. As a result, the health and future welfare of the institution depends greatly on the quality of its leaders and robustness of its governing structure. These in turn depend on the quality of those undertaking leadership roles and serving on governing bodies and on the degree to (...) which they reflect its values and aspirations. Maximising the probability that these desiderata will be achieved requires a broad-based faculty willingness to serve conscientiously on these bodies and to serve as administrators to be involved in selecting members, and to be involved on the myriad of sub-committees, task forces, departmental committees, and the like. It is not only an abdication of citizenship to leave governance and administration of the institution to a few willing faculty, it is dangerous and puts at risk the welfare of the institution. Even if these few were all able to place the welfare of the institution above their own particular agendas and their self-interest (not something on which to count), the process of self-selection could not be expected to result in a group that would adequately reflect, represent or understand the breadth and depth of the needs, aspirations and complex circumstances of the entire institution. The larger the pool of willing participants, the greater the probability that those selected will reflect best the institutional diversity. This paper draws out the rights and obligations of faculty citizens embedded in the structural arrangements common to universities in the western world. In part A we examine three fundamental components of those arrangements, components that collectively define certain rights and entail certain obligations of citizenship. These obligations flow in part from essential rights, and also in part from what is necessary to sustain the viability and vibrancy of the community. In Part B, we examine some of these essential obligations of citizenship. In Part C, we make recommendations about how to promote effective citizenship; these recommendations are collected after Part C under the heading “Recommendations.”. (shrink)

In the United States, hate speech sits at the intersection of ethical and legal debates and has a complex relationship with journalism. The First Amendment provides broad legal protections for hate...

Moral rights feature prominently and are relied on substantially in debates in bioethics. Conceptually, however, duties can perform the logical work of rights, but not vice versa, and reference to rights is therefore inessential. Normatively, rights, like duties, depend on more basic moral values or principles, and attempts to establish the logical priority of rights over duties or the reverse are misguided. In practical decision making, however, an analysis in terms of duties is more fruitful than one based on rights. (...) A right may function as a proxy term for a consequentialist rule, or for a deontological constraint, but does not thereby enrich these concepts. Rights may also help in a purely expressive sense and may assist an initial focusing on a moral conflict. However, their role in bioethics discourse is more one of convenience than of necessity. Moreover, unless rights are firmly founded on fundamental moral values, their use encourages rhetoric rather than argument. (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)

This article deals with the conceptual features and the rational justification of moral rights. For this purpose, the author starts with a common classification of rights, i.e., the distinction between rights in rem and rights in personam. He argues that rights of the first kind can be justified by a two‐fold application of the principle of universalizability, while the latter are based on moral rules concerning special social relations, rules which themselves are founded on the principle of universalizability. This distinction, (...) however, does not suffice to cover a further category of rights that play a very important role in social life, namely the rights of community membership, i.e., the particular rights that exist between the members of a social community. These rights cannot be derived from universalizability alone, but, instead, are based on the idea of social justice. This paper provides a short account of the main principles of social justice, and tries to apply them to property and welfare rights. (shrink)

There is a particular moral theory in which human rights are conceived as indestructible rights. Using Dworkin’s words we could say this is a good way of taking rights seriously. However, we may also ask whether there is another way of taking rights as seriously as Dworkin says without being a supporter of that theory. From this point of view, perhaps human rights cannot be considered neither as absolute ; nor universally valid ; and not even inalienable. Can this proposal (...) be seen as another way of taking rights seriously? (shrink)