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Choices, Interests, and Potentiality: What Distinguishes Bearers of Rights?

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Notes

  1. Cf. Joel Feinberg, “The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations,” in Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty: Essays in Social Philosophy (Princeton Series of Collected Essays) (1980): 159–160, 166, “Human Duties and Animal Rights,” Ibid: 186–187.

  2. Cf. Matthew H. Kramer, “Refining the Interest Theory of Rights,” The American Journal of Jurisprudence, vol. 55 (2010): 35.

  3. Kramer (2010: 35).

  4. It could be objected that adolescents acquire capacity to exercise agency before becoming adults. I will assume that any subject with capacity to exercise agency in the sense of being able to make reflective choices between alternative courses of action and being able to reflect over her preferences is an adult. This ability, rather than age, determines whether a subject is an adult in the relevant sense.

  5. Cf. E.H.W. Kluge, The Practice of Death (New Haven and London, 1975): 17, 91.

  6. Kluge (1975: 17).

  7. Kluge (1975: 17).

  8. Feinberg (1980: 193).

  9. Feinberg (1980: 194), Italics added.

  10. Cf. Feinberg (1980: 196–197).

  11. Suggestions along this line have been advanced by “Hybrid Theories.” Cf. Gopal Sreenivasan, “A Hybrid Theory of Claim Rights,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 25, no. 2 (2005): 257–274; “Duties and their Directions,” Ethics vol. 120 (April 2010): 465–494. Feinberg (1980): Chs. 7–8 could also be considered a hybrid theory: Roughly, he defends something akin to a Will Theory of Rights regarding the logical structure of rights, and something akin to an Interest Theory of Rights regarding the properties of entities that it is “meaningful” and “conceptually possible” to ascribe rights to.

  12. Cf. M. Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983): 105.

  13. M. Tooley, “Correspondence,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 2, no. 4 (1973): 241.

  14. Leif Wenar, “The Nature of Rights,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 33, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 223–235.

  15. Wenar (2005: 238).

  16. Cf. Wesley Hohfeld, “Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning,” in Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1923).

  17. Wenar (2005: 246).

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  1. The Cambridge Forum for Legal and Political Philosophy, The Faculty of Law, The University of Cambridge, 10 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DZ, UK

    Anna-Karin Margareta Andersson

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Andersson, AK.M. Choices, Interests, and Potentiality: What Distinguishes Bearers of Rights?. J Value Inquiry 47, 175–190 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-013-9378-9

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