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What Makes a Right Fundamental

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Daniel N. Hoffman
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Extract

Liberalism needs a theory of fundamental rights. Since rights belong to persons, a theory of rights should be linked to a conception of the person. The courts have never undertaken to develop such a conception. The implications of adopting competing positivist, deontological or empiricist conceptions of the person are explored. Because of the weaknesses of each, an eclectic “politics of rights” approach is advocated. On this approach, the validity of a claim of right is enhanced by its formal neutrality and congruity with legal precedent, but also depends on careful assessment of what recognition of the right would mean for actual persons in the concrete political situation.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , Fall 1987 , pp. 515 - 529
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1987

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References

Notes

1 Melden, Abraham, Rights and Persons (New York: Oxford University press, 1977)Google Scholar; Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and Rortie, Amelie, ed., The Identities of Persons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).Google Scholar

2 Sandel, Michael, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

3 Ibid.

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6 Ibid., p. 146.

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