Chapter04

Chapter Four

The Nature of Rights in Ethical Discourse

Copyright ©2009 Delmar, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

Rights

• Rights are justified claims:– Our due– We need not feel grateful to others – We cannot be deprived of a right without

it being a serious affront to justice


Rights (continued)

• Review the Poor Piggy case: – What basic right was taken from him? – What gives a person a justified claim to

life?


Rights Formulation

• “If John has a right to X, then others have no justification in interfering with John’s pursuit or possession of X, so long as John’s exercise of his right to X does not infringe upon the rights of others”


Thesis of Correlative Obligations

• If we consider rights as justified claims, then built into the claim is the twin thesis of rights and obligations

• Others are obliged to either provide the goods or services, or to refrain from interfering with our gaining or possessing the desired thing


Correlative Obligations

• If we assume that informed consent is a patient’s right: – What justifies this claim?

• If the patient has this right: – What is the practitioner’s obligation?


Correlative Obligations (continued)

• In the case of Poor Piggy:– What was the right?– What was the correlative obligation?– Is this a negative or positive right?


Human Rights

• Western civilization is rich in human rights language:– These are considered universal rights

inherent to all people in all lands


Human Rights (continued)

• In many cases we judge the legitimacy of nation states by how well they protect these rights

• Name five human rights– How are they justified?


Consequentialist Rights Theory

• Jeremy Bentham (father of utilitarianism) believed that rights could not be justified on the basis of humanness or as endowments given by a benign creator


Consequentialist Rights Theory (continued)

• Rights were those things that society, by collective agreement, decided to defend

• High utility is the justification


Contractarian Rights Theory

• Thomas Hobbes (nonmoralized theory)– Life in the state of nature was “solitary,

poor, nasty, brutish, and short”

• John Rawls (moralized theory)– Original position – Fair opportunity rule


Justification of Rights

• Laws of nature

• Endowments from generous creator

• By collective agreement, as in consequentialist or contractarian reasoning

• To ensure enforcement, we back them by sanctions of law: legal rights


Positive and Negative Rights

• Negative right:– Requires non-interference from others – “Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness”– Abortion: government pay argument?

• Positive right:– Recipient right– Requires others to provide goods and

services


Fetal Endangerment Case

• Review case regarding fetal endangerment

• In this case, who has rights? How are they justified?– Carolyn– The fetus– Hospital staff

• Whose rights should prevail?


Common Claims to Rights

• Identify a justification that would create the following rights:– Smoker’s rights– Nonsmoker’s rights– Animal rights– Gay rights (marriage)– Right to smoke hemp products– Right to die on request


Rights Proliferation

• In that human rights create attendant obligations for others, care should be taken in their creation

• Not all human wants should be converted to the status of human rights


Rights Proliferation (continued)

• Human creativity allows us to imagine more rights than we can fulfill

• The dilution of human rights by adding new ones threatens established claims


Key Concepts

• Rights are justified claims

• Rights can be justified in several different ways (moral, legal, social good)

• Positive rights are recipient rights

• Negative rights require others to refrain from interference


Key Concepts (continued)

• Moralized and non-moralized social contract theories considered in rights development

• Rights create obligations for others to either provide resources or to refrain from interference


Key Concepts (continued)

• Care must be taken so that the proliferation of rights claims for marginal gains do not threaten previously agreed-upon established claims

News & Politics

Chapter04