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Caring is usually defined either too narrowly or too broadly to support a moral and political theory. This chapter outlines a definition of caring that is better suited for guiding the development of a moral and political theory. Caring is defined as a practice encompassing everything we do directly to help individuals satisfy their basic biological needs, develop or maintain their basic capabilities, and avoid or alleviate pain and suffering. The chapter further outlines a theory of obligation for caring, arguing that we all have obligations to care for others in need because we all have made claims upon others to care for us when in need. The last part of the chapter discusses the rightful distribution of our caring obligations, arguing that we might justifiably show partiality in caring for ourselves and our loved ones but ultimately have obligations to care for all individuals in need when we are capable of doing so.

This chapter explains the nature of moral human rights. Although many are claim-rights, others are liberty-rights, power-rights, or immunity-rights. They are adversarial and apply to some potential confrontation between the right-holder and some second party who fails or refuses to respect the right. Their universal possession is limited to human beings in the morally relevant sense, those with the capacities for moral action. Their political relevance depends on the fact that both nation-states and international institutions are second and third parties in them. Although they are inalienable, they are not always of great importance.

This chapter explains the nature of international human rights, human rights recognized in international law. Although most of them are claim-rights, some are liberty-rights, power-rights, or immunity-rights, They are adversarial, possessed by individual human beings and holding against nation-states. They have an important, but more limited, universality than moral human rights. Although they are unlike moral human rights in being institutional rather than natural, they are similar enough to make moral human rights relevant to their justification and interpretation.

This chapter offers some fundamental clarifications of the logic of Hohfeld's analysis of rights. Its results are presupposed and partly summarized in Natural Law and Natural Rights. Axioms for a right understanding are: each Hohfeldian jural relation concerns only one activity of one person; a claim-right can never be to do or omit something, but is always a claim that somebody else does or omits something; the relevance of legal remedies to the defining terms of the schema is left undetermined by Hohfeld. Neglect of these axioms is shown to be widespread in jurisprudence. The chapter concludes with critical discussion of Dworkin on ‘the right to break the law’ and the Second Vatican Council on ‘abuse of rights’ and the limits to religious liberty.

This chapter presents a two-tiered model that predicts when — in law — claim rights will (and should) have prima facie or trumping power, and when they will (and should) not. This model is as follows: (i) claimed rights will (and should) have presumptive power over competing public interests when the core values that underlie the claimed rights and the core values the competing public interests are different in kind; (ii) claimed rights will (and should) not have presumptive power over competing public interests when the core values that underlie the claimed rights and the core values that underlie the competing public interest are the same in kind.

This chapter uses the conceptual framework developed in Chapter 6 to explain why some claim property rights lack — and should lack — presumptive power. Topics discussed include the two-tiered model of the presumptive power of property, settings for traditional powerful property claims (cases involving land titles, exclusion, patents, and similar individual interests), and settings for traditionally weak property claims (cases involving environmental laws, zoning controls, and similar public interests).

Some puzzles from different areas of philosophy are discussed. They concern the nature of claim-rights and what it is for us, as opposed to each one of us, to have a particular intention. An articulated account of everyday agreements that leads to the solution of these puzzles is offered.

This chapter examines antistalking statutes in the United States and abroad. All state and the federal governments have adopted legal mechanisms to address stalking. These enactments attest to the growing awareness of stalking with its associated suffering and economic losses. The statutes are remarkable for both their innovation and their diversity, as different jurisdictions have chosen a wide variety of approaches. In the United States, this variety can be attributed in part to the division of law-making power inherent in federalism, as well as linked to the challenging nature of a problem whose characteristics and effects are just now coming into focus. International legal strategies also vary. In both U.S. and international statutes, criminal law is most often invoked, but civil remedies are increasing. The latter includes injunctions and protection orders, as well as civil rights of action, notice provisions, stalker surveillance, stalker registries, victim compensation, and mental health evaluations and treatment. The murder of the television actress Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989 drew a great deal of media attention to the problem of stalking; in 1990 California became the first state to adopt an antistalking law. The movement progressed rapidly: by 1996, all 50 state legislatures and the U.S. Congress had passed antistalking legislation. There is considerable variation in the existing antistalking laws. Academic commentators have raised questions concerning the constitutionality of these laws under the state and federal constitutions. Early concerns were that limiting a stalker’s contact with his victim might unreasonably intrude on the stalker’s First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly. Statutes were criticized as being vague and overbroad in limiting these rights (Faulkner & Hsiao, 1993). In general, however, state courts have not been receptive to such claims (see, e.g., Bouters v. State, 1995). For example, the Supreme Court of Montana upheld the constitutionality of that state’s antistalking statute against an argument that the law violated the defendant’s free speech rights, finding that the law was not unconstitutionally vague since certain undefined terms had an accepted common usage (State v. Martel, 1995).

This chapter addresses two crucial issues extraterritoriality presents—particularly when socioeconomic rights are taken into account. In order to identify extraterritorial human rights obligations we need to know why states are the primary duty bearers of international human rights law and which state owes international legal human rights obligations to which individuals. That is, we need to allocate the burdens that go along with human rights obligations and we need to justify this allocation. To do this, this chapter considers the Hohfeldian structure of rights, analyses accounts of justifying human rights, and argues that an interpretivist account of international human rights law as a normative context is the best way forward.

This chapter expounds some technical philosophical notions that figure prominently in the rest of the book. Among the phenomena elucidated are moral conflicts, strong permissibility versus weak permissibility, overtopping obligations versus non-overtopping obligations, weak absoluteness versus strong absoluteness, physical freedom versus deontic freedom, the Hohfeldian analysis of legal positions (claim-rights and duties, liberties and no-rights, powers and liabilities, and immunities and disabilities), and the distinction between causal relationships and constitutive relationships. Although all of these concepts and distinctions are of great significance in debates over the principle of freedom of expression, they also figure saliently in many other debates. Hence, the purpose of this introductory chapter is to provide the basic philosophical preliminaries that are needed for a rigorous engagement with the principle of freedom of expression. The chapter sets the stage for the subsequent chapters, where that principle is the focus of attention.

The aim of the book—to offer a philosophical assessment of the concept of a right—is introduced, along with terminological distinctions. Chapter 1 defends the author’s Hohfeldian assumption that all claim-rights entail correlative duties owed to the right-holder. The chapter ends by clarifying the idea of a ‘natural’ right as simply a right that exists independently of anyone recognizing that it exists. So conceived, natural rights need imply neither a theistic nor a ‘state of nature’ grounding, and can include many rights protecting our sociality.

Chapter 4 develops a new account of what it is to be owed a duty. There are two parts to the analysis. The first part says that it is distinctive of a duty owed to a capable party (an adult, young person, corporation as opposed to, e.g. a baby or a rabbit) that that party is required to conceive the action the duty enjoins in first-personal terms as to be ‘done to me’. The second part says that it is distinctive of a duty owed to any party whatsoever (including ‘incapable’ parties such as babies or rabbits) that the duty-bearer is required to conceive the action the duty enjoins in second-personal terms as to be ‘done to an addressable party, a being conceivable as “you”’. These requirements need not be met for the duty to exist, for it to be fulfilled by its bearer, or for it to have a direction—but their obtaining as requirements is definitive of its being owed to someone. The chapter shows how this distinguishes demanding on one’s own behalf as owed a duty from demanding on behalf of another or in relation to an undirected duty.

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.

This chapter considers whether or not there is a right to health care by applying the conceptually important distinction between negative and positive rights. Negative rights, also called liberty rights, are rights not to be interfered with in doing something you want to do, or impeded in acquiring something you want to possess. In contrast, positive rights—also called claim rights—are rights to be provided with something. The chapter asks whether health care is a right in either of these senses, and if so, whether it could be the product of contract, oath, legislation, or simple expectation. It also examines what a right to health care, if there were such, might cover by looking at three lists of health services: one covers minimal emergency and acute care and control of epidemic disease, a second also includes chronic and reconstructive care, and a third includes all of those plus well care, dental care, and nutrition. It argues that there is no general right to health care, despite broad expectations, and that this issue will be “the main social battlefield of the coming century”.