We are now closed for the Christmas and New Year period, reopening on Friday 3rd January 2025. Orders placed during this time will be processed upon our return on 3rd January.
Building on many years of scholarship, Matthew H. Kramer sets out his definitive philosophical investigation of rights and rights-holding with this monograph, as he sometimes revisits and modifies his previous positions. Beginning with the analytical schema propounded by the American legal theorist Wesley Hohfeld, the book provides a defence of the proposition that every claim-right with a certain content is correlative to at least one duty with the same content, and that every duty with a certain content is correlative to at least one claim-right with the same content. The volume then addresses the longstanding debates over the nature of right-holding, with a sustained defense of the Interest Theory and with some innovative critiques of the Will Theory. Finally, it considers the ethical and analytical questions involved in determining who can hold claim-rights at all. It argues that the beings capable of holding claim-rights include not only human adults of sound mind, but also all other living human beings, many dead people, and all future generations of people, along with most non-human animals.
Addressing some major topics within moral, legal, and political philosophy, Rights and Right-Holding: A Philosophical Investigation will be a key work for philosophers and academic lawyers alike.
