1. Right-based Ethics

2. In this lecture…  Rights and duties  Ethics and law  Rights and morals  Choice vs. interest  Natural rights  Human rights

3. Rights and duties  A right can be understood as a legal or moral claim to something.  Rights are relational. If a person possesses a claim, he or she can demand something form another person who has a duty to provide whatever is demanded.

4. Rights and duties  Rights and duties are like mirror images, i.e. one person’s right is another person’s duty.  Rights specify the legal or moral duties that people have to each other.

5. Rights and duties  A distinction can be made between ‘positive rights’ and ‘negative rights.’  If you have a positive right, someone has a duty to do something for you, or to give something to you. By contrast, if you have a negative right, someone has a duty not to do certain things to you.

6. Rights and duties  A positive right is a right that obligates others to do something for you.  A positive right is a right to a good or a service. For every positive right, someone has a duty to do something, i.e. to provide a good or a service.

7. Rights and duties  Negative rights can be seen as rights to be left alone, or rights against harm to one’s body, property, liberty, or privacy.  Negative rights are rights to non- interference by others. For every negative right, someone has a duty not to do certain things.

8. Rights and duties  The right to education is a positive right. If children have a right to education, someone (usually the government) has a duty to build schools and hire teachers.  In order for children to have that right, the rest of society has to allocate resources so that they can attend school.

9. Rights and duties  The more positive rights there are, the more likely that some of these right may come into conflict.  No country’s resources are unlimited, and hard choices always have to be made about, say, the respective priorities of health care and education.

10. Rights and duties  The right to free speech, on the other hand, is a negative right.  If you have a right to free speech, it means that others have a duty not to interfere with your speaking. However, it does not mean that others have a duty to provide you with a platform, a microphone or an audience.

11. Rights and duties  An important characteristic of negative rights is that they can be enjoyed equally by all citizens.  As such, these rights are inextricably connected to important moral and political values such as liberty, equality and justice.

12. Rights and duties  Many negative rights are widely regarded as ‘fundamental rights’. The right to life, for example, is a moral principle based on the generally accepted belief that every person has the right to live, and, as such, should not be unjustly killed by another person.

13. Rights and duties  Another example is the right to liberty. Many freedoms (or liberties) are universally regarded as fundamental rights; for example, the freedoms of expression, religion, association, assembly and movement.

14. Rights and duties  Some negative rights are fundamental in the sense that they are related to justice, equality and respect for dignity of persons, such as the right against discrimination, the right against arbitrary arrest, and the right against cruel punishment.

15. Rights and duties  To sum up: A positive right implies the need to provide either a good or service. A negative right, on the other hand, only requires non-interference.

16. Ethics and law  Both law and ethics have a variety of social functions, such as preventing harmful conduct, promoting beneficial conduct, and enabling cooperation between individuals and groups through established rules.

17. Ethics and law  Ideally, the law of a nation should match the morals of society.  However, it is possible that some laws may conflict with society’s ethical standards, e.g. laws promoting apartheid in South Africa before the 1990s.

18. Ethics and law  Sometimes laws are changed to match changing moral standards.  Women’s suffrage and legal protection of animals are examples of changes in legislation that came about after long periods of public debate.

19. Ethics and law  If something is legal, it simply means that you have a right to do it. However, what is legal is not necessarily moral.  For example, a pregnant woman has the right to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, but it does not follow that her behavior is morally right.

20. Ethics and law  Having a right gives us a choice over whether and how to exercise it, but not all such choices are morally right.  Thus, exercising one’s rights is not the same as doing what is morally right.

21. Ethics and law  ‘Legal rights’ and ‘right conduct’ must not be confused.  ‘Having a right to do something’ (i.e. the law does not prohibit you from doing so) is not the same as ‘doing the right thing’ (i.e. doing something morally praiseworthy).

22. Ethics and law  Some immoral acts (e.g. cheating on a spouse) are not illegal. And some illegal acts (e.g. civil disobedience) are not immoral.  There is no law saying that you have to be kind to elderly people. But even without such a law this still might be the morally right thing to do.

23. Rights and morals  Rights and duties are important concepts in moral reasoning.  For example, if killing is wrong, it means that we have a duty not to kill people because everyone has a ‘right to life’.

24. Rights and morals  A strong connection exists between rights and morality: We take for granted that it is right to respect, honor and protect people’s rights, and it is wrong to violate or infringe on other people’s rights.

25. Rights and morals  ‘Right-based’ morality is the view that questions of right and wrong can be boiled down to identifying certain basic rights and then asking whether any of such rights have been violated in a particular situation.

26. Rights and morals  However, there are serious doubts about the usefulness and fruitfulness of this approach.  As we have seen, having a right to do something does not imply that doing so is morally right.

27. Rights and morals  For example, you have a right to remain silent when you are arrested by the police. What it means is that the police have a duty not to force you to say anything. It does not mean that when you exercise your right to remain silent, you are doing the morally right thing.

28. Rights and morals  Most people think that rich people should donate money to help the poor children in Africa.  It can be argued that rich people have a (moral) duty to help the poor children, but it does not follow that the poor children have a (legal or moral) right to demand donations from the rich.

29. Rights and morals  Conflicts of moral beliefs cannot be resolved through assertion of rights.  The abortion debate, for example, involves a clash between two fundamental rights – a fetus’s right to life and a pregnant woman’s freedom of choice.

30. Rights and morals  We may have to go to court to settle disputes that involves a clash of rights (and duties).  The legal system usually does not allow conflicts between legal rights, which must be resolved by deeming only one of the mutually conflicting rights to be legally valid.

31. Rights and morals  Finally, people these days are more ‘rights-conscious’, and more rights have been included in the law to protect their interests.  But the more rights there are, the more like it is that they are going to conflict. Moral principles are therefore required to put them in order.

32. Choice vs. interest  Why do we need rights? There are two different answers to this question: 1.rights are needed to protect choices 2.rights are needed to protect interests

33. Choice vs. interest  The modern concept of ‘rights’ is premised on the idea that all persons have intrinsic value (i.e. people are valuable in themselves), and hence everyone has an interest in not being harmed by others.

34. Choice vs. interest  Another important idea is that people’s dignity and intrinsic value come from their capacity to make choices and decisions for themselves. To preserve people’s dignity, it is necessary to protect their ability to make choices.

35. Choice vs. interest  According to the ‘choice theory of rights’ (also known as the ‘will theory of rights’), rights are necessary to protect choices.  In other words, only those who can choose whether and how to exercise their rights can become right-holders.

36. Choice vs. interest  The implication of the choice theory is that those who cannot make choices – such as infants, the comatose, future generations, and non-human animals – cannot have rights.

37. Choice vs. interest  Supporters of the choice theory argue, in addition, that rights and duties are inseparable; therefore, only those who are capable of performing duties can have rights.

38. Choice vs. interest  If those who are incapable of choice cannot have rights, does it imply that we can use babies as test subjects in medical experiments?

39. Choice vs. interest  According to the ‘interest theory of rights’, rights are necessary to protect important interests, such as interests in personal security, basic liberties (freedoms) and a healthy life.

40. Choice vs. interest  Infants cannot make choices or perform duties, but they do need rights to protect their interests, for example, the right not to be killed or tortured.  Similarly, people who are unconscious or mentally disabled cannot make choices or have duties, but they, too, have interests that must be protected.

41. Choice vs. interest  Future generations are incapable of choice now, but their interest and well- being can be affected by our decisions today. So they, too, need rights.  These and other counterexamples show that having rights does not necessarily depend on being able to make choices or perform duties.

42. Choice vs. interest  Which theory – the choice theory or the interest theory – provides a better account of the purpose of rights?

43. Natural rights  It was John Locke (1632-1728), an English philosopher, who first proposed that individuals have rights that exist prior to, and hence independently of, government and law.

44. Natural rights  According to Locke, individuals possess certain ‘natural right’ simply because they are human beings.  Natural rights, in his view, are rights that exist in the state of nature, i.e. before individuals come to live together in society.

45. Natural rights  For Locke, natural rights – which include life, liberty and property – already exist before any law or government.  These rights are not granted to people by government; instead, law and government are created to protect people’s existing rights.

46. Natural rights  Locke described men as being born free and equal in the state of nature.  As individuals were free to pursue their own interests, it was inevitable that they would come into conflict with each other.

47. Natural rights  That is why law and government was needed to resolve conflicts and maintain social order.  People, therefore, entered voluntarily into a ‘social contract’ with one another to create a ‘limited government’ as a means to resolve conflicts, maintain peace, and protect their rights.

48. Natural rights  The social contract can be seen as an agreement among the members of society to give up some of the freedoms they could exercise in the state of nature in exchange for security provided by a government instituted by the contract.

49. Natural rights  Once established, the government has the responsibility to enforce laws to protect the rights and interests of the governed from those who would harm their life, liberty, or property.

50. Natural rights  The government, in other words, is the trustee of the people’s power, and therefore any exercise of power by the government must be specifically for the purpose of serving the people.

51. Natural rights  In Locke’s view, government power is limited by the social contract.  In other words, government must not use its power to do anything unrelated to law enforcement or the protection of individual rights.

52. Natural rights  According to Locke, because the government’s power comes from the people, it must at all times be bounded by the rule of law.  Individuals retain a right to revolution – i.e. a right to overthrow and replace a government – if the government abuses power or breaks the terms the social contract.

53. Natural rights  Locke’s views on individual rights and legitimate governments are one of the cornerstones of liberal political philosophy.  The most important insight of his social contract theory is that government gains its legitimacy from the consent of the governed.

54. Natural rights  While no government in the real world ever arose from an actual social contract, Locke’s social contract theory offers not only an insightful account of legitimate political authority but also a compelling justification for placing limits on government power.

55. Human rights  Human rights are basic rights and freedoms that all people are entitled to regardless of nationality, sex, religion, or other status.  In other words, every person is entitled to certain fundamental rights, simply by the fact of being human.

56. Human rights  International human rights law lays down obligations of governments to act in certain ways or to refrain from certain acts, in order to promote and protect humans right and fundamental freedoms of individuals and groups.

57. Human rights  In 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Almost all nations accept the Universal Declaration in theory if not in practice. All the rights listed in the document apply equally to everyone, everywhere.

58. Human rights  The Universal Declaration enumerates a long list of human rights which include the right to life, liberty and security of person; the right to equal treatment; the right to own property; the right to freedom of movement and emigration; and so on.

59. Human rights  Human rights, as we have seen, are the rights that we have simply because we are human.  These rights are generally regarded as [1] inalienable, [2] universal, and [3] held equally by all human beings.

60. Human rights  Inalienable rights are rights that cannot be taken away. We cannot stop being human, and hence the human rights that we have are inalienable.  Human rights should not be taken away, except in specific situations and according to due process.

61. Human rights  For example, the right to liberty may be restricted if a person is found guilty of a crime by a court of law.  However, even the worst criminal retains certain human rights, such as the right to a fair trial and the right against torture.

62. Human rights  Human rights are universal; they are rights held by every human being, everywhere.  All of us are entitled to the same basic rights because we all have the same morally important interests in not being killed, or tortured, or forced to do things against our will, etc.

63. Human rights  Finally, human rights are held equally by all human beings, regardless of nationality, sex, race, religion, wealth, sexual orientation, ability, and so on.  The concept of equal rights for all is derived from the idea of equal dignity of all human beings.

64. Human rights  What are the rights that all humans are supposed to have?  There is no absolute agreement, but today there are certain rights that have been accepted by people all over the world.

65. Human rights  Some basic human rights include:  right to life  right to liberty  right to property  right to privacy  equal treatment before the law  freedom of speech  freedom of religious worship

66. Human rights  freedom from torture  freedom from cruel and inhumane punishment  freedom from discrimination  freedom of movement and residence  right to an adequate standard of living  right to education

67. Human rights  The rights mentioned above are not universally accepted by all societies, but they are accepted by many and are a starting point for a discussion of human rights.

68. Human rights  If freedom of speech is a basic human right, do we have the right to defame or spread rumors about other people? Do pranksters have the right to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater?

69. Human rights  What problems may arise if rights (and duties) can be arbitrarily created or abolished through legislation? Should government grant special rights to particular social groups (e.g. farm subsides, affirmative action mandates)?