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Dworkin, Rights, and Persons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Lawrence Haworth
Lawrence Haworth*
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo
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Extract

In Taking Rights Seriously, Ronald Dworkin defends the thesis that some, at least, of the rights people have, and in particular the most fundamental rights such as free speech and religious freedom, are “rights against the state”. By this he means that they identify modes of action that (a) individuals ought to be permitted to carry out, and (b) interference with which ought to be banned, even if a majority in the society prefer that the actions be prohibited or prefer some other condition achievement of which would require prohibiting them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , September 1979 , pp. 413 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1979

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References

1 Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977.

2 Ibid., p. 270.

3 Ibid., pp. 272-73.

4 Ibid., p. 234.

5 Ibid., p. 277.

6 Ibid., p. 237.

7 The other aspect of personhood, not mentioned here, is that of being held to obligations. A fuller account would need to bring this idea into play, since we might find reasons for according the general right to be free to some non-humans (although we would no doubt take a different view of what counts as a compelling reason for interference in their case). But we would not want to call those non-humans who are accorded a (qualified) right to be free, “persons”. The substantive difference underlying the terminological cavil is that the non-humans can't (and therefore shouldn't) be held to obligations.