What Are Rights Duty The Law Philosophy Tube

You have the right to remain silent is phrase that you may have heard if you've watched lot of cop shows or if you've ever been arrested. guess you might have also heard people talk about constitutional rights or employment rights or human rights. But what are rights? Kind of seems like an important question to know the answer to if we want to say that we have rights and that other people need to respect them. In the philosophy of law, there's one ruling model of human rights that's pretty widely accepted. It was discovered by Wesley Hoofeld. So, it's called the Hofelian analysis and will teach it to you now. It looks something like this. If you've ever studied any biology or you know anything about the structure of DNA, then this is going to be really really easy for you because the Helian analysis is like the DNA of rights. In DNA, there are four nucleotide bases and In the heraldian analysis, rights have four building blocks. Claims, duties, liberties, and no claims. And these are called the Hofelian incidents. In DNA, guanine only bonds with cytosine and thymine only bonds with adanine. In the Hofelian analysis, if have claim, you have duty. So, let's say have right to life. The structure of that right is that have claim on you not to kill me and you have corresponding duty not to kill me. Our next pair is liberties and no claims. If am at liberty to do something, you have no claim on me not to do it. You can't impose duties against me doing that. So for instance, if am at liberty to travel anywhere like, you have no claim on me to stay where you want me to stay. Just like in DNA, incidents only bond with their corresponding incident. According to the Heraldian analysis, every right can be broken down in this way. To have right is to be in relation to another person about some action. Always there are the three elements. you, the other person, and the action that you're both talking about. Kind of like Christmas cracker. You're each holding an end, and there's toy in the middle that's the reason you're both there. So, that's the first stage of the Heraldian analysis. But there is level two. Level one dealt with so-called first order rights. Those are the rights you're probably familiar with. But some lucky people have second order rights. Those are the rights to change and tinker with the first order rights. So for instance, if you were the president of the United States, you would have the power to create or nullify rules that other people had to follow. That would be your second order right as president. And these are the rights that are really interesting and it's important to know how they work because they're the rights that the people who run your life have to mess with you. Like in the first level, this time we have four incidents. And this time they are power, liability, immunity, and disability. The best way to explain how they work is by looking at the military. So the captain of the ship can create duties for the crew. The captain has the power to create duties. The crew are at liability to have their duties changed. The captain can't give orders to the admiral. So the admiral has immunity. The captain has disability. Again, the incidents bond in pairs just like DNA. Power with liability, immunity with disability. And that, boys and girls analysis. Now, if you're very clever, you'll already have spotted that used the word duty lot back there. Like, if have claim, you have duty. What's the nature of that duty? Is it moral one or just legal one? Because the question of whether rights can give you moral duties or whether rights are just legal construction is big big debate. Well, the clever thing about the herelian analysis is that whichever side of that debate you're on, you can still use it. Whether you think that the nature of duty with respect to rights is moral or just legal, you can still break down rights using Hoofeld's technique. If you like whatever the molecular structure of the four nucleotide bases of DNA is, it's still true that they bond together in the pairs that they do. Now, it's important to understand what the Herfeldian analysis is. It's not like scientific theory where we could do an experiment and see whether or not it's correct. In fact, some people have argued that it's actually unfalsifiable, which in science is dirty word. Hoffeld actually defined human rights as having these relations and having these incidents. So if we want to know whether his idea was any good, we need to ask is it useful for understanding the way we use and talk about rights. Earlier on said that the hereli analysis is widely accepted but not universally. Some philosophers like Onora O'Neal and Brian Kintenho think that it has its limits. They think that there are some rights which can't be broken down into that three-part relation with the two people in the action, the Christmas cracker model. We'll have to go into the specifics of their ideas another time, but Brian was actually one of my lecturers in the philosophy of law. So, the cutting edge of legal philosophy, even though the Herfeldian analysis has stood for almost century, might be about to tell Wesley Hoofeld to jog on. Shut up, Wesley. What do you think? Is the Hoffelian analysis useful for understanding the way we talk about human rights? Are there any rights that you can think of that don't fit Hoffel's model? Thanks very much for watching today. Don't forget to leave me comment and I'll go through some of the best ones next time. Philosophy Tube is paid for largely by me out of my own pocket, but also by my patrons on Patreon. So, big thanks to this month's top donators. Jesse Austin, Intimidating Scon, DJ McSac, Lydia and Nate Thorne, Jeffrey Emmeliano Haynes, Glenn Murphy, and Horatio Corduro. Thank you so much all of you for your generosity. Everyone else who donated, your names are in the description. 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