Rights | Moral Philosophy Through the Ages

MORAL RIGHTS

From Moral Philosophy through the Ages (2nd edition), by James Fieser

CONTENTS

Introduction

A New Meaning of the Word "Right"

Locke's Theory of Natural Rights

Natural Rights within the State of Nature

Slavery and the Right to Life

The Right to Property

Criticisms of Natural Rights

Burke's Criticism: Abstract Notions of Natural Rights Are Too Simplistic

Bentham's Criticism: Legal Rights are Grounded in Fact, Natural Rights are Not

Marx's Criticism: Natural Rights Emphasize Selfishness and Ignore Community

Pateman's Criticism: Natural Rights are Fabricated in a Sexual Contract

Human Rights Theory Today

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Interrelation between Human Rights and Legal Rights

Lingering Issues with Rights Theory

Various Types of Rights

Correlativity of Rights and Duties

References

Study Questions

INTRODUCTION

Today we all worry about identity theft. We spend a frustrating amount of time protecting our identities, and proving to businesses we are who we say we are. The concern is justified and one victim's story illustrates why. For three decades a man named Matthew built a life based the stolen identity of a former coworker named William. Matthew built a career, married, and raised a child all under the stolen name. When William discovered and tried to correct the record, authorities concluded that William was the impersonator. He was arrested and jailed for more than a year. He spent additional months in a state psychiatric facility, where clinicians viewed his claim as delusional. Investigators finally resolved the case by confirming William's identity through DNA testing. Matthew was later convicted in federal court.

Identity theft, like any kind of theft, is morally wrong, and there are multiple ways I can express this wrongness. I can say that it is contrary to eternal moral truths, or to natural law, or to the will of God, or a dozen other moral reference points. But the first one to come to mind might be that identity theft violates my rights. Appealing to my rights is probably the most universally recognizable way I can make a moral claim. It cuts across all cultures, it forcefully gets your attention, and it makes clear that I am a victim seeking redress. If we survey the hot button moral issues of our time, they are often presented in the language of rights. The issue of abortion is a contest between the woman's right to autonomy and the fetus's right to life. The issue of euthanasia is about a person's right to die in end-of-life situations. The issue of censorship is about the right of free expression. The issue of animal rights has the word "right" built directly into it. The downside of appealing to rights, though, is that very the concept is complex. There are notions of "natural rights," "human rights", "moral rights," "legal rights", "political rights", "civil rights", "positive rights".

In this chapter our focus is primarily on moral rights, and the first step in clarifying the notion of "rights" is to distinguish between moral rights and legal rights:

• Moral right: a claim against a person, that is not created governments (e.g., the right to be treated with basic respect).

• Legal right: a claim against a person that is created by governments (e.g., the right to drive at age 18).

Many if not most moral and legal rights overlap, but the two examples above illustrate how they are conceptually independent. The right to be treated with basic respect is uniquely a moral right. It is indeed something that we can claim against people who treat us disrespectfully. However, no legal system actually guarantees this right in a general way, and someone can breach it without violating any legal statute. By contrast, the right to drive at age 18 is a uniquely legal right. For, unlike a moral right, it exists solely because lawmakers created it and can change it at will, and it has no force outside the legal system. In cases where moral and legal rights overlap, it is the context that determines which is primary. If I am a victim of identity theft and say "that thief violated my rights", I am emphasizing the legal aspect of rights, perhaps by wishing to seek redress thought the court system. However, if I am in a lawless community on Pirate Island, my claim of rights violation is largely a statement about the thief's moral character.

The distinction between moral and legal rights is the foundational one, and all other concepts of rights derive from these. "Natural rights", for example, are moral rights that theorists believe are grounded in nature itself, either human nature or the fabric of the natural cosmos. "Human rights" are moral rights that theorists take to arise from our shared human status, not from the natural order of things. Natural rights and human rights might then become the inspiration for legal rights, such as though the U.S. Bill of Rights, but that is up to the government in question to decide. Our task in this chapter is to make sense of moral rights, which will take us through the territory of both natural rights and human rights.

A New Meaning of the Word "Right"

Many of our moral notions trace back to antiquity, such as with Plato and Aristotle's account of "moral virtue" and Stoic philosophers' account of "moral duty". However, the notion that "I have a right to X" emerged only in the seventeenth-century as an offshoot of natural law theory. Some etymology might help us understand this new meaning of the word "right". The English word "right" itself comes from the Old English "riht", going as far back as the twelfth century. Here it simply means "proper", as in "it is right to show your parent's respect". Compare, though, these two uses of "right" and how their grammatic use differs:

• "It is right to show your parent's respect" (an adjective describing the pronoun "it").

• "Your parents have a right to be respected" (a noun which is the direct object of the verb "have").

It is only the second of these that expresses the notion of a moral right. It is as though the right itself is an item of property that we inherently possess. This is the shift that occurred during the seventeenth-century. English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) speculates about how this linguistic change took place with the word "right", and he blames English-speaking people specifically for not being careful in how they used the term. Suppose, Bentham says, that your own a coat. I then recognize that the coat is yours, and I say this:

1. You ought to possess your coat.

Here I am expressing my satisfaction at the idea of your owning the coat, and I also imply that you should have legal protection to things you own. Suppose that I then say this:

2. It is right for you to possess your coat.

Here I am saying exactly the same thing as in (1): I am pleased with you owning the coat, which should be legally protected. Suppose that I next say this:

3. You have a right to your coat.

The words here are very similar to those in statement 2, but there is a big difference. In statement 3, I am implying that you can knock someone down who tries to take your coat, but I don't imply this in statement 2. For Bentham, statement 2 is the language of peace, and statement 3 is the language of mischief. Once I've asserted that you have a right to your coat, it is easy for me to start calling it a natural right if I think that you are naturally entitled to "knock down" someone "who by force should attempt to take it" (Pannomial Fragments). Given how close the wording is between statements 2 and 3, Bentham says, we quickly slide from one to the other and then add the word "natural."

Who was the first person to make this shift in the use of the term "right"? It may have been Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), who translated the Latin term ius naturale as "right of nature" in the following:

The right of nature, which writers commonly call ius naturale, is the liberty each man has to use his own power as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature, that is to say, of his own life, and consequently of doing anything which, in his own judgment and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto. [Leviathan, 14]

Hobbes goes on to say that, in the state of nature prior to the formation of governments, "every man has a right to everything, even to one another's body". Also, to move from the state of nature requires we "lay down this right to all things", that is, "divest" ourselves of these. Here Hobbes seems to understand "right" in this new sense as an item of property that we inherently possess, but can divest out of necessity if we so choose.

While Hobbes may have introduced this new meaning of the word "right", its biggest shift came from English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704).

LOCKE'S THEORY OF NATURAL RIGHTS

Locke was a physician by training and profession. In the later years of his life, though, he focused on philosophy and produced several works that made him among the most influential writers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. One of these works is Two Treatises on Civil Government (1690), in which he presents his most mature view of natural rights. Much of his inspiration came from Hobbes's social contract theory in his book Leviathan (DATE).

Natural Rights within the State of Nature

Hobbes began his discussion of natural laws and rights by considering what humans would be like in a state of nature, prior to any form of government. For Hobbes, the state of nature is a horrible environment, with nothing to guide us but the desire to survive and the impulse to satisfy our various desires. Because we are equally powerful and resources are limited, we are in constant conflict with others as we pursue our desires. In this condition, "Every man has a right to everything, even to one another's body."

Locke, too, begins his account of natural rights by speculating about the state of nature before the establishment of governments. Like Hobbes, Locke sees it as a "state of perfect freedom" and a "state of equality." But, unlike Hobbes, Locke does not view it as a moral free-for-all. Instead, within this condition, we are guided by a law of nature to avoid harming others regarding their life, health, liberty, and possessions:

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. . . [Two Treatises, 2.2.6]

For Locke, we get this law from our "infinitely wise maker", and this law is grounded in our roles as God's servants and creations.

With all this religious language, we might assume that Locke holds that God has imprinted these natural laws within human nature and that we know those laws intuitively. But that is not so, and in this way Locke parts company with the earlier natural law theories of Grotius and Pufendorf. Instead, he argues, moral rules are neither innate nor self-evident since they stand in need of proof. He writes, "I think there cannot any one moral rule be proposed whereof a man may not justly demand a reason" (Essay, 1.2.4). The proof we give for moral principles, he argues, may even be as rigorous as the demonstrations we make in mathematics (Essay, 4.12.8), though he himself does not offer any such proofs. However, Locke argues, the knowledge we in fact gain of moral principles ultimately comes from whatever influences we are exposed to, particularly in our formative years. In the worst-case scenario, our influences may be "the superstition of a nurse, or the authority of an old woman" which, with "consent of neighbors, grow up to the dignity of principles in religion or morality" (Ibid., 1.2.22). We will absorb pretty much anything, in the same way that "white paper receives any characters" (Ibid.). But to do it right, he says, a child should first be exposed to the Bible, and later to the books on duty and natural law that we've already talked about here, namely, those by Cicero, Grotius and Pufendorf. (Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Sect. 186). An advantage to Locke's empirical approach to our knowledge of natural rights is that his theory avoids the pitfalls of self-evident intuitions that Sidgwick points out. In fact, Locke clearly warns how our so-called "self-evident" principles might really just be institutionalized superstition in disguise.

Locke continues that, not only do we have natural rights to life, health, liberty, and possessions, we also have the right to punish those who violate our rights to these. Without the right to punish offenders, our other rights would be useless. This right to punish is very sweeping and entitles us to kill offenders. By violating my rights, the offender declares war on me, and at that point I can't reason with him any more than I can reason with a wild animal that attacks me. Just as I am entitled to kill an attacking animal, I can also kill the human offender who threatens my right to life. I can even kill a thief, whether or not the thief shows an immediate intention of killing me.

Locke's reasoning on this point is interesting. A thief who steals from me, such as the mugger who pulls a knife on me, is using force to get me into their power. Locke states, "I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my liberty, would not, when he had me in his power, take away every thing else." That is, if the aggressor forcefully subordinates me to steal my money, I can only assume that he will also kill me. Not only can I kill the thief on the spot, but, because I am now in a state of war with the thief, I can hunt him down and kill him later. However, Locke notes that if there is a functioning government in place, then the state of war between the thief and me ends once the thief runs away. At that point, it is up to the laws to address the wrong. For this reason, Locke believed that the best way of minimizing "wars" with others is to form societies in which authorities take over the task of punishment.

Much of Locke's work focuses on the political and legal implications of natural rights, but here we will consider two issues that have a moral component: slavery and property ownership.

Slavery and the Right to Life

Earlier natural law philosophers believed that slavery was justified. Aquinas argued that slavery is natural because society benefits from enslaving some people. Appealing to Hebrew and Roman law, Grotius argued that "to every man it is permitted to enslave himself to any one he pleases for private ownership." That is, I can voluntarily become a slave if it suits my purposes. Today, the notion of voluntary enslavement advanced by Grotius makes no sense, and it is difficult even to envision a scenario in which voluntary enslavement would be a real option. Hobbes, though, gives us one scenario. Suppose that our country is overrun by a despot who wants to control everything and who promises simply to kill those who don't comply. To save our lives, we agree to become his slaves for some period of time. While enslaved, we must obey the despot, and if we don't, then he can kill us for breaking the agreement. Hobbes believed that this kind of voluntary slavery is contractually binding.

Locke takes a middle ground on the subject, based on a specific definition of "slavery." Strictly speaking, if I am your "slave," then my entire existence is in your hands, and you can kill me as you see fit. This notion of slavery, for Locke, is not morally acceptable: I cannot voluntarily give you the right to kill me since I myself don't have the right to dispense with my own life. Locke believes that the right to life is inalienable in the sense that we cannot simply cast it aside or give it to someone else. It is as though our right to life is on loan to us from God, and we don't have the authority to rid ourselves of it. For this reason, I cannot kill myself, since in doing so I wrongly assume that I have the authority to dispense with my right to life. By the same reasoning, I cannot transfer my right to life to someone else in a voluntary slave contract.

However, even though I can't transfer my right to life to someone else, according to Locke, I can forfeit that right by harming someone. It is as though God loans me my right to life on the condition that I abide by the law of nature; if I violate that law by harming someone, then God revokes my right to life and gives it to my victim. In this case, I am not so much a slave as I am a justly condemned prisoner. My victim can then either kill me on the spot or delay killing me and force me to labor for them. Suppose that my victim delays killing me but makes my life so miserable through hard labor that I wish I were dead. Even at this point, I don't have the right to end my misery and kill myself since my victim still holds my right to life. The best that I can do is disobey my victim's orders and prompt them to kill me.

So, for Locke, although I cannot voluntarily enslave myself, I can essentially make myself a prisoner on death row by harming someone and thereby forfeiting my right to life. There is yet another twist to Locke's view on slavery. Locke describes a more moderate form of servitude called "drudgery" that does not give the master control over the servant's right to life. The servant in drudgery loses their liberties and possessions—and their condition may be dreadful—but the servant still retains the right to life. Locke believed that we can voluntarily submit ourselves to drudgery.

Although there is certainly an important technical distinction between slavery and drudgery, most of us would still identify such drudgery as slavery in the broader sense of the term. It is disappointing that an original philosopher like Locke did not condemn drudgery as he did the more severe form of slavery. But, with some modifications to Locke's theory, we can go that extra mile. Locke rejects the severe form of slavery because it violates our inalienable right to life. We might similarly reject drudgery on the grounds that it violates our inalienable right to liberty. That is, through drudgery, I lose my liberty to select my own occupation and to come and go as I please. A defender of drudgery might argue that not all components of my right to liberty are inalienable. For example, when I sign an employment contract, I transfer over to my employer a large part of my liberties during my working hours. However, in response we may say that there is always a core set of liberties that I retain. For example, my employer can't chain me to an office computer and force me to balance the books under penalty of torture. The problem with drudgery, then, is that it violates this core set of liberties.

Locke didn't take this route to argue against drudgery because he had a different conception of liberty, confined mainly to issues of governmental authority, not an individual person's sphere of autonomy. For Locke, the right to liberty involves the freedom from absolute and arbitrary power, and the freedom to act within the rules established by a consensually created government:

Freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature. (Two Treatises, 2 A.22)

The problem with Locke's account of liberty is that a consensually created government might agree to permit drudgery, in which case drudgery would not violate our liberty rights. To reject drudgery, then, we need to expand Locke's notion of liberty beyond the rules of a consensually created government. That is, we need a notion of liberty that meaningfully retains our personal autonomy, such as our ability to come and go in spite of what a government decides. Rights theorists after Locke have viewed the right to liberty in this expanded sense.

The Right to Property

Locke discusses the right to property in more detail than any of our other principal rights. Although this may seem unusual at first, it makes sense when we consider the impact that property ownership has on us all. We labor much of our lives to acquire possessions, most of which we could survive without. More wars break out over land disputes than for any other reason. In giving advice to political rulers, Italian political philosopher Nicolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) emphasized the importance of respecting an individual's property. Machiavelli dramatically states that "above all he [i.e., the ruler] must keep his hands off the property of others, because people more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their inheritance" (The Prince, Ch. 17). Locke similarly believed that property is of the greatest importance to us.

Locke begins his discussion of the right to property by explaining how we first obtain property. In the original state of nature, everything in the world belonged in common to all humans. People then took some item from the common storehouse, altered and improved it through their labor, and thereby created something that was uniquely their own. For example, someone may have cut down a tree and carved it into a boat, which he then called his own. We first acquire property, then, by applying our labor to a commonly held object. In Locke's words, "Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature has provided, and left it in, he has mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property" (Two Treatises, 2.27). According to Locke, this is an activity that people could freely engage in on a first-come-first-served basis, without needing to get prior consent from others. If prior mutual consent were required, people would have starved to death while waiting for permission from everyone. Locke considers the objection that this formula for acquiring property will incite people to be greedy and apply their labor to claim as many things as they can. The common storehouse of goods would then run out, and people would begin to fight over possessions. Locke counters that this worst-case scenario could never happen because God has provided such a bounty that the common storehouse of goods will never run out, regardless of our greed.

Locke's formula for acquiring property applies to land as well as to things like wooden boats. Locke writes that "as much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, enclose it from the common" (Ibid., 2.32). Again, Locke argued that God has provided such an abundance of land that we all can take what we can use and there will always be more. It is as if each of us is drinking from an ever-flowing river that will never run dry. Today, with a world population ten times that of Locke's day, his view seems naive. All the land on the earth is spoken for, and the best that we can hope for is to buy or inherit a tiny piece of land from someone else. Locke recognized that most of the land in modern European communities was already claimed and cultivated. However, he argued that in other parts of the world "there are still great tracts of ground to be found" that the local inhabitants don't make use of (Ibid., 2.45).

It is easy to see how Locke's view of property rights could justify the conquering of foreign lands by early explorers. In Locke's day, an explorer who landed on American shores would have found none of the signs of land cultivation that were common in Europe. The local inhabitants lived off the land and used primitive agricultural techniques, but none claimed "ownership" of the vast woodlands. So, to the explorer, the land was still part of the common storehouse, ready to be claimed and cultivated. Locke argues further that society actually benefits by claiming land and maximizing its use:

I ask, whether in the wild woods and uncultivated waste of America, left to nature, without any improvement, tillage or husbandry, a thousand acres [would] yield the needy and wretched inhabitants as many conveniencies of life, as ten acres of equally fertile land do in Devonshire, where they are well cultivated? (Two Treatises, 2.37)

So, not only were they justified in claiming the "uncultivated waste of America," but it was actually good for them to do this. Again, from a contemporary ecological perspective, Locke's view seems naive. We now know that the survival of life on earth depends on not cultivating large tracts of land. Also, we cringe at Locke's disrespect for indigenous cultural traditions that do not match European standards, particularly in areas of economics and property ownership.

Although there are serious problems with Locke's specific notion of land acquisition, his more general intuition about property acquisition rings true for other kinds of property. When we invest our time and labor into some project, we typically feel that we "own" the project. This sense of ownership is superbly reflected in U.S. copyright law, which states that we immediately own a literary or artistic work once we create it:

Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright.

It is the job of governing bodies to work out the details of acquiring and transferring property. However, we find in Locke a convincing explanation of where I first get the right to call something mine.

Political Authorities and the Right to Liberty

We noted previously that the right to liberty, for Locke, is a freedom from the arbitrary rule of some political authority. For Locke, the reason we submit ourselves to any political authority is for protection. When we are off by ourselves or even with family clans, we can't completely protect ourselves from attack. The solution is to band together in larger communities by forming a compact, which requires that we give up some of our liberties. As we try to make political decisions within these communities, we cannot reasonably expect everyone to agree on every point, such as who should serve in the military or whether there should be rules against public drunkenness. We must, then, follow the will of the majority; otherwise, our compact will be meaningless. The will of the majority is the only legitimate political authority, and we usually determine the will of the majority by empowering representative assemblies to make decisions for us all.

Locke explains that the government that we form can fall apart in a number of ways. First, it may be squashed by an invading foreign power. Second, we may voluntarily disband it with the aim of replacing it with something better. Third, we may revolt. Locke believed that political revolutions are fully justified when a government acts contrary to its appointed purpose—namely, to protect our lives and our property. Here, the government forfeits its power, and the people essentially return to the state of nature in which they can form a new government:

By this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society. (Two Treatises, 2.19.222)

For Locke, this "breach of trust" justifies intense civil wars, as well as more minor insurrections.

Locke's position on the overthrowing of governments was very radical for its time. Although Hobbes similarly believed that governments are created by people in a social contract, Hobbes argued that we can't overthrow governments—even bad ones—since, to effectively keep the peace, governments must exercise absolute authority. In an early essay on the subject of natural law, written about thirty years before his Two Treatises, Locke also argued that we must show absolute obedience to political authorities. Locke states in this early work that "the law of nature decrees that princes and a law-maker . . . should be obeyed." However, Locke's view on the subject of absolute obedience changed during the English revolution of 1688, which was a revolution that Locke supported. Locke wrote his Two Treatises at this time, and as we saw, he valued the preservation of our natural rights more than obedience to political authorities.

To recap, here are the central points of Locke's theory:

• In the state of nature, we have the rights to life, health, liberty, and possessions, and we may rightfully punish people who violate these rights.

• We cannot voluntarily transfer our right to life to someone else, although we can forfeit this right by violating the rights of others.

• Our right to acquire property, including land, arises when we apply our labor with something that is held in common.

• Our right to liberty is a freedom from absolute and arbitrary power, and we may rightfully overthrow governments that violate our natural rights or fail to protect them.

CRITICISMS OF NATURAL RIGHTS

Burke's Criticism: Abstract Notions of Natural Rights Are Too Simplistic

Shortly after the French Revolution, Irish philosopher and politician Edmund Burke (1729–1797) denounced the French uprising in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Although Burke supported the more moderate American Revolution, he believed that the French Revolution uprooted important social values involving religion, property, and the nobility. Part of Burke's attack focused on the revolutionaries' notions of natural rights. For Burke, their conception of natural rights was simply metaphysical speculation with no consideration of the complex manner in which societies actually operate. Although bold statements about our natural rights stir our emotions, the assertion of an abstract right to food, for example, is useless in resolving the practical issue of feeding people. In this case, Burke says, we are better advised to listen to a farmer or a physician:

What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician rather than the professor of metaphysics.

The underlying problem, according to Burke, is that notions of natural rights are simple, neat, and tidy, whereas "the nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity." Once we latch onto such simplistic concepts of natural rights, our "complicated mass of human passions" pulls those notions in any number of directions, and the original simplicity is entirely lost. So, in proportion as these notions of natural rights are "metaphysically true" because of their simplicity, "they are morally and politically false" for failing to apply to the real world. Burke didn't completely reject the notion of rights, but he believed that rights occupy a middle ground between purely abstract speculation and purely practical issues, such as starving people. Because rights are in a place of limbo, they are impossible to define. However, he says, we can still recognize them when we properly apply them to real-world issues. For Burke, our true understanding of rights is shaped through the art of compromise as we balance different social interests through a kind of rational "computing principle."

In short, Burke has two observations about rights theory: (1) Discussions of natural rights in the eighteenth-century were very abstract, with little real-world application; and (2) we gain a true understanding of rights by balancing different social interests. Burke is correct in both of these observations. In the years since Burke, though, rights theory has developed to the point that it now adequately addresses Burke's two points. As to Burke's first point, the overly abstract nature of rights, there is a reason early rights theorists such as Locke listed only a few general rights. Most proponents of natural law argued that nature mandates only one very general law, such as "Do that which is suitable for human ends" or "Be sociable" or "Don't harm others." It is then the job of politicians and legal experts to continue the deduction process until they arrive at very specific rules. Theorists such as Locke and documents such as the Declaration of Independence stopped with a short and general list of rights. However, since then, the legal machinery in each country carries out the deduction process and gives us precise guidelines for applying rights in very precise situations. For example, I have the right to stand in front of a courthouse and protest against a corrupt judge. Discussions of human rights today typically draw on the subtle distinctions made in such discussions of legal rights.

As to Burke's second point, the issue of balancing different social interests, rights theory today does this exceptionally well. When you assert any right, such as your right to smoke, that right is only one claim that must be weighed against competing claims, such as my right to be free from secondhand smoke. Although the smoker's and the nonsmoker's rights may be equally legitimate, it takes a lot of compromise and real-world application to determine when one right overrides the other. The smoker/nonsmoker case is a good illustration of how many conflicts between rights emerge.

Rights theorists distinguish between two classes of rights that inevitably come into conflict. The first class involves a freedom to various liberties, such as the freedom to smoke, to speak publicly, to print and circulate information, to engage in religious worship, or to travel around. The second class involves a freedom from various harms, such as the freedom from being exposed to secondhand smoke, from being physically attacked, from being publicly insulted, or from having property stolen. If I exercise my freedom to speak out against a corrupt judge, this might conflict with the judge's freedom from public insult. Again, the legal process in the United States continually works out compromises between conflicting legal rights. In this case, my right to speak out against a public official has priority over that official's right to protect their reputation. In the case of smoker's versus nonsmoker's rights, our freedom from being harmed has priority over someone else's freedom to smoke. As these issues play out in the theater of legal rights, we have more concrete ideas for how to resolve moral conflicts between human rights.

Bentham's Criticism: Legal Rights are Grounded in Fact, Natural Rights are Not

Burke held open the possibility that there are some sort of natural rights, although we cannot define them. However, Bentham rejected the notion of natural rights completely, calling it "nonsense on stilts." The heart of Bentham's critique is his view that real laws will give us real legal rights, but imaginary natural laws will give us only imaginary natural rights. He picturesquely makes this point here:

Right . . . is the child of law; from real laws come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from laws of nature, fancied and invented by poets, rhetoricians, and dealers in moral and intellectual poisons, come imaginary rights, a bastard brood of monsters "gorgons and chimaeras dire." (Anarchical Fallacies, Conclusion)

Bentham believed that all rights, both legal and natural, are fictions that we create for the convenience of discussion. We talk about rights as though they are personal possessions, but this is only symbolic language since we clearly don't possess rights as we possess other things, such as cars or houses.

Although all rights are fictions, Bentham concedes that legal rights are at least grounded in some kind of fact. People in power, such as presidents, lawmakers, and judges, all seek to uphold the laws upon which our legal rights are based. The "tangible facts" involved here are the psychological dispositions of these government officials concerning their interest in upholding the laws. However, Bentham argues, there is no tangible reality to natural laws that might form a factual basis for natural rights. Defenders of natural rights say that these rights are of divine origin and are factual in that sense. In the words of the Declaration of Independence, humans are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." But, Bentham argues, this explanation places the issue beyond the realm of fact, and we are simply left with the defender's private conviction. For Bentham, without a concrete factual foundation, the notion of natural rights is completely empty of meaning. Even if we grant in theory that a person has a natural right to something, "his condition is not in any respect different from what it would be if he had it not (Ibid.).

Thus, for Bentham, Natural rights are not grounded in the kind of hard facts that legal rights are. How might we respond to Bentham? On the one hand, in the face of tragedies today like human trafficking, we want to assert a universal right not to be enslaved beyond what governments say. On the other hand, Bentham raises serious questions about the factual foundation of these alleged natural rights. It is unlikely that the dispute will be resolved anytime soon. In fact, scholars today still debate about whether there are any natural rights beyond the legal rights established by governments. However, we can offer one solution here that tries to preserve the meaningfulness of natural rights while at the same time acknowledging Bentham's skepticism about them.

Let's grant Bentham's point that so-called natural rights aren't factually grounded in the authority of God or some other intangible realm as natural law theorists maintained. Let's also grant that natural rights are the inventions of "dealers in moral and intellectual poisons" such as Locke. This does not necessarily mean that they lack factual validity entirely. Consider where legal rights get their factual validity. Legal philosopher John Austin (1790-1859) explains that there are three necessary requirements of any law, including laws creating legal rights. That law must (1) be commanded by a sovereign, (2) be backed by punishment and (3) carry a duty to avoid that punishment (Lectures on Jurisprudence, Lecture 5). For example, a California state law giving citizens the legal right to drive at age 18 has factual validity since, first, the law was created by the state legislation, second, those driving underage can be punished, and third, minors under that age (and their parents) are afraid of that punishment. This same formula works with moral rights, such as the right to possessions. The sovereign in this case is not John Locke, but rather the people in society who insist on the moral right to possessions once the idea gains broad acceptance. The punishment in this case is not state law, but instead social condemnation, ridicule, gossip, and maybe even assault. In Bentham's words, I have a right to "knock down" anyone who attempts to steal my coat. The duty to avoid punishment is that none of us want this kind of social retaliation for violating another's right to possessions.

Contrary to Bentham's position, then, there is a factual basis for moral rights that parallels legal rights when we work our way through the above three-step sequence. Perhaps the broad acceptance of rights is a culturally shaped intuition that is shared by everyone who lives in and appreciates humane societies. Or perhaps it is only an attitude shared by a smaller group of impartial and socially sensitive people. In either case, it is rooted in some fact of human psychology. And this is in the same ballpark as the psychological facts surrounding government officials who desire to uphold the laws upon which legal rights are based. We are, then, inventing natural rights just as we do legal rights. It's unclear how Locke himself would have reacted to the idea of people "inventing" moral rights since he often dodged issues of objectivism. But many of his contemporaries would have been horrified at the thought that Locke, or the spirit of his times, "invented" natural rights. Today, though, this idea isn't nearly so horrifying. Irwin Stotzky states "undoubtedly human rights are among the greatest inventions of our civilization" (Stotzky, 1998). According to him, the importance of natural rights is in no way diminished by the fact that they are artificial creations.

Marx's Criticism: Natural Rights Emphasize Selfishness and Ignore Community

German political philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883) had a long-standing dislike for social structures that allowed a ruling class of people to exploit an underclass. He spent his entire adult life in revolutionary politics, urging a revolution of the working class. In view of this, we might think that Marx would appreciate the theory of natural rights and its emphasis on equality. On the contrary, Marx believed that natural rights theory is seriously flawed, particularly as expressed in American and French political documents. For Marx, natural rights theories reinforce the selfish side of human nature and suppress our community-oriented side, which is our true identity. Marx makes this point by drawing a contrast between the egoistic man and the species-being. The egoistic man is what we are when we act in isolation of one another within the neutral territory of civil society, not knowing or caring who our neighbors are as long as they leave us alone. The species-being is what we are when we see ourselves connected with other members of our species in a kind of extended family.

Marx looks at each of the key natural rights as expressed in political documents and exposes their selfish orientation. For example, the right to liberty allows me to do what I want so long as I don't harm others. However, this separates me from other people rather than unites me with them. The right to property allows me to enjoy my own possessions and arbitrarily dispose of them without regard for other people. The right to equality allows me to be treated as a self-sufficient single person. The right to security simply preserves the status quo and guarantees that I will remain selfish. Marx concludes that "none of the so-called rights of man goes beyond egoistic man, man as he is in civil society, namely an individual withdrawn behind his private interests and whims and separated from the community." By following natural rights theory, we won't see ourselves as community-oriented species-beings, and the only bond that will hold us together is our selfish need for protection, especially the protection of our private property.

Marx is correct that eighteenth-century discussions of rights were exceptionally self-oriented, and it is no secret why this was so. Writers on natural rights were launching revolutions against oppressive rulers and social classes. By revolting against their oppressors, they were essentially saying, "Leave me alone!" The problem with Marx's critique, though, is that he wrongly assumes that we are either self-oriented or community-oriented, that we cannot be both at the same time. Most of us have a mixture of selfish interests and community interests, and when oppressed by others, even the best of us occasionally shouts, "Leave me alone!" Eighteenth-century natural rights theorists successfully tapped into our self-oriented side while neglecting our community-oriented side. However, later rights theorists addressed that deficiency and in fact put forward a more community-oriented set of rights, which requires that we help others in need. We can best understand this community-oriented set of rights by distinguishing between negative rights to be let alone and positive rights to our welfare. Negative rights are our rights to not be mistreated, as brilliantly expressed by 18th-century rights theorists. By contrast, positive rights, also called welfare rights, are our rights to be helped by others. If I am injured, I can rightfully demand medical help. If I am starving, I can rightfully demand food. In these cases, I don't want people to leave me alone; instead, I want them to do something for me. To the extent that I demand welfare rights for myself, I am duty-bound to assist others when they demand welfare rights for themselves. So, with one eye we look toward ourselves to protect our negative rights to be let alone, and with the other eye we look toward others to help secure our welfare rights. Some conservative rights theorists today question the legitimacy of welfare rights and argue instead that our true rights are limited to negative rights to be let alone. But to the extent that we agree with Marx that traditional natural rights are too selfish, we will want to endorse the more community-oriented set of welfare rights.

Pateman's Criticism: Natural Rights are Fabricated in a Sexual Contract

The criticisms by Burke, Bentham and Marx all argue that notions of natural rights are structurally flaw for being too abstract, or being pure inventions without factual foundation, or emphasizing selfishness at the expense of community. British political theorist Carole Pateman (b. 1940) takes a different approach and focuses on the gender biases underlying natural rights. In her book The Sexual Contract, she argues that so-called "natural rights" reflect the male preferences of the philosophers who created the social contract myth, which in turn defined those so-called "natural rights". As she states it,

Sexual difference is political difference; sexual difference is the difference between freedom and subjection. Women are not party to the original contract through which men transform their natural freedom into the security of civil freedom. Women are the subject of the contract. The (sexual) contract is the vehicle through which men transform their natural right over women into the security of civil patriarchal right. [The Sexual Contract, p. 6]

Much of her critique focuses on the traditional role of women in the family. According to Pateman, feminists often describe the modern family as a quasi-feudal institution where the wife is like a serf who is restricted by her lower status. However, she argues, the wife's subordination is not an ancient remnant of feudalism but a thoroughly modern, contractual arrangement.

She describes the sexist bias implicit in the most influential social contract theorists. Locke presupposed that women naturally lack the rational capacities required to be independent individuals or property owners in their own persons. He consequently smuggles in a natural order of female subjection into the state of nature. Rousseau argued that the biological and physical differences between the sexes dictate completely different moral capacities. As such, he excluded women from citizenship and subjected them to the lifetime mastery of their husbands to maintain civil stability. Kant viewed the marriage contract as effectively establishing the husband as the civil master of his wife. This allows the husband to possess the wife's body as a thing, while the wife is granted no corresponding political right over the husband. Rawls specifies that we view the parties in the social contract as "heads of families" who have children. By doing so, he implicitly assumes that the household head is male who represents his dependent wife.

This implicit bias, Pateman argues, has been passed down to our own times. Women are not incorporated into the capitalist workplace simply as gender-neutral "workers," but explicitly as women. Mechanisms like sexual harassment and sexual banter function as a patriarchal language of discipline, ensuring that male sex-right and domination extend directly into the public and economic sphere. She warns that, even today, the original contract is a political fiction that successfully represents modern societies to their citizens as realms of universal freedom. To dismantle modern patriarchy and allow women to become truly autonomous citizens, she says, this political fiction must be completely rejected, and not simply amended.

To be clear, Pateman is not arguing that the original prehistoric social contract was rigged by males who included women in only a subservient status with limited rights. For Pateman, there never was an original prehistoric social contract. Rather, it is only a myth created by males like Locke to support their favorite laws and social rules, including those of female subservience. At the time of Locke, women would have good reason to see this rigged myth of a social contract as a "sexual contract". In the same way, to the degree that the social contract myth at the time supported slavery laws and social rules, slaves would with good reason call it a "slave contract". We could argue further that the effects of that rigging continue today. It is true that most laws supporting female subservience have been eliminated from government legal codes, thus making legal rights equal. But moral rights are a different matter. They operate at a different level of authority, and are shaped by social acceptance, not statutory law. It is here that we still see female subservience in actual social practice, which perhaps is still grounded in a social contract myth rigged by men. That is, the moral rights created at this social level are still shaped by groups who rig the system in ways that perpetuate female subservience. Some of this may be direct, such as by traditionalist groups who insist that women have special domestic responsibilities. Others may be more indirect, such as people passively accepting the fact that men dominate society in social positions of wealth and power. Even if moral rights are inventions of society and founded on myths, as Bentham suggests, the language of moral rights is here to stay. The battle for equality, then, is best fought at both the legislative and moral levels.

HUMAN RIGHTS THEORY TODAY

Since the time of Burke, Bentham, and Marx, moral rights theory has only grown more influential, and we can't conceive of dismissing the theory as these early critics suggest. In the 20th century, rights theorists dropped the term "natural" with its some what dated reliance on natural law theory, and adopted the term "human rights," which simply designates that every person alive has a specific set of rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Occasionally, a great philosopher will write a book that has an impact beyond the world of philosophers and influences lives and events in the larger world. Locke is a case in point. Aside from shaping other moral and political philosophers of his time, Locke's view of natural rights directly impacted the views of political reformers and revolutionaries. Cases in point are the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1776 and France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens in 1789. In more recent times, though, we have the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

The Universal Declaration is a short document that lists several dozen human rights that apply to all humans worldwide. Eighteenth-century political documents grounded natural rights in God's authority and natural law. By contrast, the Universal Declaration completely avoids these appeals and takes a more practical approach by founding human rights on our shared desire for peace. According to the Universal Declaration, by recognizing human rights, we bring about "freedom, justice and peace in the world." By disregarding human rights, we bring about "barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind" and oppressed citizens are compelled to rebel against tyranny.

The central theme of the Universal Declaration is that human rights are universal in the sense that everyone has the same rights, regardless of nationality or ethnicity:

Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

After establishing the universal nature of human rights, the Universal Declaration makes a statement similar to eighteenth-century declarations: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person."

Unlike eighteenth-century political documents that stop with a short general list of rights, however, the Universal Declaration spells out very particular rights. At the top of the list is a prohibition against slavery and servitude: "slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms." Next is a prohibition against torture and "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." Targeting tyrannical governments, the Universal Declaration lists various rights to fair criminal trials, political asylum, and tribunals concerning human rights violations. Moving to more domestic issues, we have rights "to marry and to found a family" and to own property. We also have liberty rights to "freedom of thought, conscience and religion" and the right to "peaceful assembly and association." One of the boldest components of the Universal Declaration is its list of economic rights. These include the "free choice of employment," "equal pay for equal work," the right to "periodic holidays with pay," and various forms of social welfare including special assistance for childcare.

A common criticism of the Universal Declaration is that the standard of rights is set so high that few countries in the world can actually meet them. In fact, some of the economic rights are not realities here in the United States. However, this argument is akin to saying that all standards of morality are invalid since few people have perfect moral conduct. The important question is whether the human rights listed are (in the words of the Universal Declaration itself) "a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations." It is not clear what kind of person would answer no to this question.

The Interrelation between Human Rights and Legal Rights

The notion of rights is so firmly embedded into our thinking today that it is difficult for us to discuss moral issues without quickly citing various rights. If someone vandalizes your car, you may say that your property rights have been violated. If the police make you remove some old refrigerators from your backyard, you may say that your liberty rights have been violated. When asserting our rights, at various times we may be referring to our basic human rights or to our basic legal rights. However, many times we may not really know whether we're referring to our human rights or our legal rights. In our common thinking, the lines between the two have become blurred.

One of the reasons for this is that there is a unique interrelation between human rights and legal rights. On the one hand, discussions of legal rights draw from our more basic intuitions about human rights. Suppose, for example, that as a legislator I am trying to write something about the legal right to free speech. I will very likely draw from my intuitions about our human right to free speech and related liberties. On the other hand, our intuitions about human rights draw from the refined discussions of legal rights. Suppose, for example, that as a moral philosopher I want to say something about my human right to criticize government officials. I will be less abstract if I look at how this issue is addressed in the law and in court cases. Even if I don't fully agree with the laws and court decisions, my thoughts on this issue will be more appropriate to real-world situations than they would be otherwise.

So, the lines of distinction between human rights and legal rights seem to be blurred, and it seems that we need to accept them both as a package. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights blurs the distinction between human rights and legal rights even more. On the one hand, the Universal Declaration is an expression of our moral intuitions about human rights, and on the other, it is a legal document of a governing body with some power of enforcement. This extra blurring between human rights and legal rights has particular advantages when addressing major human rights violations today, such as the lingering practice of slavery in Mauritania. A simple moral condemnation may not be enough to end that abuse. But a condemnation by the United Nations, backed with sanctions, is more likely to have an impact.

Although the marriage between human rights and legal rights may be a good thing for society at large, it is a loss for moral philosophers. If we want to speak intelligently on a specific issue of human rights today, we may need an intimate knowledge of U.S. case law and perhaps even knowledge of international law. Without this knowledge, our abstract philosophical discussions risk being "morally and politically false" in Burke's terms or, even worse, "nonsense on stilts" in Bentham's terms. So, much of the discussion of specific human rights today is taken on by legal scholars and political scientists. The task that remains for moral philosophers is to show what is uniquely moral about our human rights intuitions.

LINGERING ISSUES WITH DUTY AND RIGHTS THEORY

In this chapter we looked at the traditional theories of intuitive moral duties and natural rights, and criticisms of both of them. Beyond their mere theoretical aspects, though, the roles of duties and rights take on new life as we attempt to apply them to an almost endless number of unique moral situations that arise in our lives. We need to distinguish some types of duties from other types, and some types of rights from other types. The distinctions then mount. This is not a criticism of either duty or rights theory. Rather, it exposes an ongoing problem of necessity. For the concepts of duties and rights to be useful barometers of moral obligation, we sometimes need to make picky distinctions. To do full justice to them all would require book-length treatments, but here we will present some of the more important ones.

Various Types of Rights

First there is a distinction between universal rights vs. institutional rights, each of which includes subtle variants. Universal rights are those that are fundamental to human nature. These would include the Lockean notion of "natural rights" associated with natural rights theory. These also include what philosophers call "moral rights", which humans possess regardless of societal or legal recognition. Universal rights also include "human rights", such as those articulated by the United Nations. Though inspired by the concept of natural rights, human rights are more institutionalized and require legal recognition. In contrast to universal rights, institutional rights are those created or recognized by social or governmental institutions and can in theory differ from one country or jurisdiction to another. The term "legal rights" as we have been using it here conveys this meaning. A similar concept is that of a "positive law" based on the theory of legal positivism, which holds that rights are created by human institutions and derive their authority from social facts, such as legislative enactment, rather than from moral or natural principles.

A second distinction is between negative vs. positive rights, which we can lay out as follows:

1. Negative rights: rights to be left alone.

a. Liberty rights (such as smoker's rights).

b. Harm rights (such as nonsmoker's rights).

2. Positive (or welfare) rights: rights to other people's help.

Negative rights involve a justified constraint upon someone's actions which restricts them from injuring us in some way. These are sometimes called "non-interference rights" since we are essentially demanding people to not interfere with us. Positive rights, on the other hand, do the opposite and demand the involvement of other people in our lives, particularly to help us in time of need. The right to medical assistance or affordable housing are cases in point. A third distinction is between liberty rights vs. harm rights. These are both types of negative rights, where we demand that people leave us alone. Liberty rights, involve me at liberty to do as I choose in public spaces without someone stopping me, such as my exercise of free speech or free movement in public places. Harm rights, by contrast, are demands to be free from overt actions such as assault and theft.

Fourth is a distinction between individual vs. collective rights. Individual rights are held by persons independently of others, like my right of free speech. Collective rights, though, are held by groups, such as the right to self-determination by native Americans. These rights aim to protect groups rather than individual members.

The quantity of distinctions within both duty and rights theory is a good sign rather than a bad one. These distinctions emerge from real-life controversies, when a simple list of duties and rights are insufficient to solve problems, such as the moral duties we have towards animals, or the rights that indigenous groups can demand towards us. These distinctions allow for more precise ethical reasoning, and enable moral theory to evolve address real-world dilemmas as they occur.

Correlativity of Rights and Duties

But there is an interesting companion to duty theory called rights theory: morality is founded upon self-evident rights that we have. In many ways, the two are opposite sides of the same coin. For example, if I have a moral right not to be robbed, this means that you have a moral duty not to rob from me. If I have a moral right to speak freely, you then have a moral duty to not interfere with my speaking. Using our present example of voluntary homelessness, if I have a moral right to be homeless, then you have a moral duty to not interfere with my choice. This view is called the correlativity of rights and duties: the moral rights of one person entail the moral duties of another person.

Both duty theory and rights theory emerged from natural law theories of the seventeenth-century, which explains much of their similarities. In different ways, they both dominated moral discourse in subsequent centuries. In this chapter we will look at their origins and some philosophical problems associated with them. We begin with duty theory.

We opened this chapter mentioning the principle of the correlativity of rights and duties, where the rights of one person entail the duties of another person. For example, if I have a right to payment of $10 by Joe, then Joe has a duty to pay me $10. This means, in theory, everything we've said in this chapter about rights could be rephrased using the language of duties. For example, the claim that "I have a natural right to life, health, liberty and possessions" can be translated into the claim that "you have a naturally imposed duty to not interfere with my life, health, liberty or possessions." When the United Nations states that "Everyone has the [natural] right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion", this can be translated as "Everyone has a duty to not interfere with someone else's exercise of thought, conscience and religion". The question is this: if rights theory is redundant, why do we hold onto it, rather than just revert back to the language of duty theory? Afterall, the theory of moral duties has been around since the ancient world, whereas rights theory is a comparative newcomer. What new does rights theory bring to the table in our moral discourse?

One answer is this. The key difference between moral duties and moral rights is that duties involve what I owe others and rights involve what others owe me. The creation of rights theory, then allows me to focus on my self-interest, and think about what others owe me rather than what I owe others. That is, asserting my moral rights will come easy to me as a self-interested human, and I may not even think about the moral duties that I owe others. The downside of this emphasis, though, is that it will not necessarily make me a better person, for even criminals assert their moral rights. By contrast, if I also focus on my moral duties, then I will be forced to think about what I owe other people, and this will morally improve me. This is probably why Pufendorf and other early theorists emphasized the duty component of morality more than the rights component. By focusing on moral duties, we not only awaken within us a sense of what we owe others but also may awaken within us a sense of what we owe ourselves. With the issue of voluntary homelessness, for example, rather than focusing on my liberty right to do as I please, I may instead think about my duty to develop my talents.

REFERENCES

Austin, John. Lectures on Jurisprudence (1863). Various editions.

Bentham, Jeremy. Anarchical Fallacies, Conclusion, in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, edited by John Bowring (London, 1838–43), Vol. 2, p. 522 ff.

Bentham, Jeremy. Pannomial Fragments, Chapter 3, in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, edited by John Bowring (London, 1838–43), Vol. 3, p. 217h.

Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the French Revolution (1790). Various editions.

Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689), 2.28.8. Various editions.

Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government (1689). Various editions.

Locke, John. Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693). Various editions.

Machiavelli, Nicolo. The Prince (1532). Various editions.

Marx, Karl. "On the Jewish Question" (1843), in Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).

Pateman, Carole. The Sexual Contract. Polity Press. 1988.

Stotzky, Irwin P. "Establishing Deliberative Democracy: Moving from Misery to Poverty with Dignity." University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository (1998).

United Nations. "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" (1948).

STUDY QUESTIONS

Please answer all of the following questions:

11. What is the new meaning to the word "right" that emerged in the seventeenth-century, and how did it differ from the original meaning?

12. For Locke, in the state of nature, why can I kill a thief even if he doesn't show any intention to kill me?

13. What is Locke's view on whether natural rights are intuitively self-evident?

14. What is Locke's strict notion of slavery and his notion of drudgery?

15. What is Locke's formula for acquiring property, and why does he believe that it also applies to acquiring land?

16. What are the main rights indicated in the United Nations' "Declaration of Human Rights"?

17. What is Burke's criticism of rights theory, and what is the response to this criticism given in the chapter?

18. What is Bentham's criticism of rights theory, and what is the response to this criticism given in the chapter?

19. What is Marx's criticism of rights theory, and what is the response to this criticism given in the chapter?

20. What is the correlativity of rights and duties, and what is the key difference between a statement of rights and a statement of duty?

21. Short essay: pick any one of the following views in this chapter and criticize it in a minimum of 100 words. Locke: slavery or property; one of the responses to Burke, Bentham or Marx.