Claim rights and liberty rights: Difference between revisions

To illustrate, a world with only liberty rights, without any claim rights, would by definition be a world wherein everything was permitted and no act or omission was prohibited; a world wherein none could rightly claim that they had been wronged or neglected. Conversely, a world with only claim rights and no liberty rights would be a world wherein nothing was merely permitted, but all acts were either obligatory or prohibited. The assertion that people have a claim right to liberty – i.e. that people are obliged only to refrain from preventing each other from doing things which are permissible, their liberty rights limited only by the obligation to respect others' liberty – is the central thesis of [[Liberalism|liberal]] theories of [[justice]].

 

Hohfeld's original analysis included two other types of right: besides ''claims'' (or ''rights'' proper) and ''liberties'' (or ''privileges''), he wrote of ''powers'', and ''immunities''. The other two terms of Hohfeld's analysis, ''powers'' and ''immunities'', refer to second-order liberties and claims, respectively. Powers are liberty rights regarding the modification of first-order rights, e.g. the [[United States Congress|U.S. Congress]] has certain powers to modify some of U.S. citizens' [[legal rights]], inasmuch as it can impose or remove legal duties. Immunities, conversely, are claim rights regarding the modification of first-order rights, e.g. U.S. citizens have, per their [[United States Constitution|Constitution]], certain immunities limiting the positive powers of the U.S. Congress to modify their legal rights. As such, immunities and powers are often subsumed within claims and liberties by later authors, or grouped together into "active rights" (liberties and powers) and "passive rights" (claims and immunities).