Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: I survey several counterexamples (by Raz and MacCormick) to Hohfeld's conjecture that a claim-right is correlative to a directed duty and (by Cornell and Frick) to Bentham's suggestion that a claim-right is correlative to a wronging. We can vindicate these claims of correlativity if we acknowledge that entitlements like claim-rights and directed duties admit of degrees of abstraction: that they may be general rather than specific, unspecified rather than specified, or indefinite rather than definite. I provide an error theory consisting in linguistic and practical reasons for why we articulate normative incidents in ways that threaten correlativity. And I deny that abstraction imposes a heavy metaphysical cost on rights theory, though I leave open whether abstraction excludes certain explanatory accounts of rights such as the interest theory or will theory.
Source: Legal Theory
Author: Julian David Jonker
Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,255
OpenAlex ID: W4386543665