From Directed Duties to Rights

Abstract

Chapter 6 explains how the foregoing chapters—with their focus on the analysis of directed duties—generate an analysis of Hohfeldian claim-rights, and how this analysis relates to the other forms of rights within Hohfeld’s taxonomy: privileges, powers, and immunities. The idea that claim-rights are enforceable directed duties is criticized, and the conceptual primacy of directed duties is explained. The chapter ends with a summary of the position developed through Chapters 2–6, which together constitute Part I of the book: the conceptual part arguing that rights are fundamentally ‘Addressive’ duties.