The Realm of Rights

Rights are invoked constantly in moral, political, and legal argument, but what is it to have a right? What makes an attribution of rights true? And how do the rights we hold against one another relate to the broader structure of moral obligation? In The Realm of Rights, Judith Jarvis Thomson provides the most systematic and philosophically rigorous account of rights that she produced across her distinguished career. Thomson begins by insisting that the question of what it is to have a right logically precedes the question of which rights we have. Her answer is that a person's having a right amounts to a complex moral constraint, one which requires, other things being equal, that the right be accorded. She examines carefully what those "other things" are, and how competing considerations can relieve agents of the requirement to accord a right without eliminating the right itself. She then divides our rights into two fundamental classes: those we hold simply by virtue of being human beings, including rights that others not kill or harm us, but notably excluding any right that others meet our needs, and those we acquire through specific interactions, promises, consent, and legitimate legal systems. Property rights, she argues, fall into the second class, arising only within a legitimate legal order. A landmark in analytical moral philosophy, The Realm of Rights remains the most thorough systematic treatment of the subject available.