Rights Protecting Performance of Duties

Abstract

Chapter 14 turns from property to a further class of rights groundable only by how they serve parties beyond the right-holder. Unlike property, the rights of Chapter 14 protect the right-holder’s performance of role-defining duties to serve others: e.g. a bus driver’s or politician’s rights to be unimpeded in performing her duties of office, or a doctor’s to her assistant’s help. The chapter argues that unlike with property, there is little risk of people erroneously conceiving such rights as grounded fundamentally by the right-holder’s good. Nonetheless, such rights distinctively protect the right-holder’s important interest in carrying out her morally justified duties. On this basis, the chapter defends our use of the concept of a ‘right’ in such cases—even though because the right-holder’s interest cannot be the main ground of the duties to assist or to avoid impeding, conceiving such duties as correlating with rights is not conceptually compulsory.