Concluding Comments

Abstract

Professor MacCormick raises at least three objections to my general thesis of the independence of a right to V and a claim to V, and one to my specific minor point that what I called ‘subjunctive’ claims are neither true nor false. The three objections to my main thesis are, first, that in fact ‘having rights entails having justified claims’; secondly, that there is a kind of claim, namely ‘claims expressible as imperatives’, whose neglect by me is the cause of my failure to see the validity of the first objection; thirdly, that, contrary to my view, a right to different kinds of things does imply either a different kind of right or, though I don’t think MacCormick, despite his plea for Hohfeld, would go as far as this, different senses of the word ‘right’. The first objection can be found at the end of his section 3, the second in that section passim; the third is found in section 2.