In Hohfeld's analysis, which right is best described as an entitlement that correlates with a duty owed to the right-holder?
Choose an answer, then check it.
Philosophy & Ethics · Foundations
Rights
On this page 9 sections
In 30 seconds
A Right An entitlement or claim that others owe something: an action, a forbearance, or a recognized status. Full entry → is an entitlement or claim that generates duties in others: if you have a right that your neighbor not enter your yard, your neighbor has a corresponding duty. Rights may be moral, grounded in moral reasons, or legal, recognized by law, and a right can be one without the other. Negative rights demand non-interference; positive rights demand provision. Wesley Hohfeld distinguished claims, privileges, powers, and immunities. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) is the best-known attempt to name universal rights, though its foundations remain debated.
Why this matters
Rights language shapes law, politics, medicine, and everyday disputes. When a patient questions a treatment, a renter challenges an eviction, or a community contests a development, each side typically claims a right. Understanding what a right is, and what kind of right is being claimed, clarifies what would settle the dispute: a change in law, a new duty, or a clash of genuine entitlements. The same distinctions used in courtrooms appear in moral arguments about privacy, speech, and aid. Studying rights equips students to analyze such claims precisely rather than merely repeat them.
The college version
What a right is: claims and entitlements
In philosophy, a right is standardly analyzed as an entitlement or claim that generates duties in others. If you have a right that your landlord give notice before entering, the landlord has a corresponding duty toward you. Rights talk is not merely a way of describing what people want; it asserts that someone is owed something - an action, a forbearance, or a recognized status. That is why rights language is powerful in disputes: it shifts the question from "What would be nice?" to "What is owed?"
Moral rights and legal rights
A central distinction separates moral rights from legal rights. A Legal right A right recognized and protected by the law of a particular jurisdiction, whether or not morality endorses it. Full entry → is one recognized and protected by the law of a particular jurisdiction: its existence can be checked by locating the relevant statute, regulation, or court decision. A Moral right A right grounded in moral reasons, whether or not the law recognizes it. Full entry → is grounded in moral reasons rather than in any legal code. Because the two are independent, a right can be one without the other. A right may be morally justified yet unprotected by law, and a law may grant a right that many people think morally unjustified. The two kinds interact: moral arguments often aim at changing the law, and legal recognition can make a moral right enforceable.
Negative rights and positive rights
Rights are also often sorted by what they require of others. A Negative right A right to non-interference, such as a right against assault. Full entry → entitles its holder to non-interference: the right against assault, for example, requires others to refrain from attacking. A Positive right A right to provision of some good or service, such as a right to welfare assistance. Full entry → entitles its holder to provision of some good or service: a right to welfare assistance requires others to supply it. The distinction is popular among normative theorists, especially those with a libertarian leaning, but it is not uncontroversial. Critics note that enforcing any right costs resources, and that many rights mix elements of both, so the boundary between negative and positive rights is debated rather than fixed.
Hohfeld's map of rights
Early in the twentieth century, the American legal theorist Wesley Hohfeld argued that "a right" is not one thing but several, and he distinguished four basic incidents. A Claim-right In Hohfeld's scheme, a right that correlates with a duty owed to the right-holder. Full entry → correlates with a duty owed to the right-holder: the employee's claim to wages pairs with the employer's duty to pay. A privilege (or liberty) is simply the absence of a duty not to do something: you have a privilege to pick up a shell on the beach because you have no duty not to. A Power In Hohfeld's scheme, the ability to alter one's own or another's rights or duties. Full entry → is the ability to alter one's own or another's rights or duties: making a promise creates a claim in the promisee. An Immunity In Hohfeld's scheme, protection against another's power to alter one's rights or duties. Full entry → is protection against another's power: a witness's right against self-incrimination blocks others from changing that position. Most real-world rights are molecular combinations of these incidents.
Human rights and their contested foundations
Human rights are rights held simply because one is human. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948, is the best-known statement of the idea; its Article 1 declares that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Drafted after the Second World War by a UN commission chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, the Declaration sets out thirty articles and has been translated into more than 500 languages. Its philosophical foundations, however, remain contested. Some justify human rights by features of human status, in a deontological spirit; others justify them by their good consequences, in an instrumental spirit; and moral relativists deny that any moral truths hold universally.
Rights and duties: correlativity
On the Correlativity The thesis that every claim-right of one person corresponds to a duty of another person. Full entry → thesis, rights and duties come in pairs: if A has a right against B, then B has a duty to A. Hohfeld's table makes the logic explicit: every claim-right correlates with a duty in at least one duty-bearer. Correlativity does not say that duties exhaust rights, or that rights are nothing but duties looked at from the other side. It says that a claim-right without any corresponding duty would be incomplete, because the point of the claim is that someone owes something.
Three live debates
Three debates recur in the philosophy of rights, and this lesson presents them without deciding them. Are rights universal? Universalists hold that all persons have the same basic rights; relativists treat rights as products of particular societies and histories. Do groups have rights? Some theories, such as the interest theory, can extend right-holding to groups and institutions, while other accounts insist rights belong to individuals. Can rights conflict? Rights often appear to conflict - a public right to protest against a government's duty to keep order, for example - and philosophers differ over whether such conflicts are real or merely apparent, and over which right should prevail.
Eli explains
The same idea, in plain words
Explain it like I’m 10
Rights are a way of saying who owes what to whom. When you say "I have a right to," you are usually saying that other people, or institutions, are not allowed to do certain things to you, or must provide certain things for you. That is why rights come with duties attached: your right not to be pushed around is your neighbor's duty not to push. Some rights are written into law, like the ones in a lease; others are moral claims that exist even when no law protects them. People disagree about which rights everyone has, whether groups can have rights, and what happens when two rights pull in opposite directions. Knowing the vocabulary helps you say which kind of right you mean.
Picture it like this
Think of a right as a ticket that other people are required to honor. If you hold a seat ticket at a theater, the staff owe you a seat and other patrons have a duty not to take it. A legal right is a ticket the theater printed and enforces. A moral right is a ticket that binds people even when no one printed it - like the promise you owe a friend because you gave your word.
Where the picture stops working
Tickets are issued by someone and can be revoked, while moral rights are usually thought to attach to persons rather than to be granted by anyone. Tickets also rarely conflict, whereas rights frequently appear to - two valid tickets to the same seat is a better image for a rights conflict, and philosophers disagree about how to resolve those.
Worked example
Priya lends her bicycle to her neighbor Sam for the weekend, and they agree Sam will return it by Sunday evening. In Hohfeld's terms, Priya now holds a claim-right that Sam return the bicycle, and Sam holds the correlative duty to Priya. Sam also holds a privilege: he has no duty not to ride the bicycle this weekend. Priya retains a power, because she can waive her claim and let Sam keep the bicycle longer, which would change Sam's duty. If Sam damaged the bicycle, Priya's rights against him would be different claims, and her rights against everyone else - that strangers not take the bicycle - are separate claim-rights with their own duty-bearers.
Key takeaway
Rights are claims that generate duties in others. Distinguishing moral from legal, negative from positive, and Hohfeld's four incidents makes rights talk precise enough to analyze real disputes without pretending the hard debates are settled.
Quick check
3 questions here, of 5 in this lesson’s practice set. Answers stay hidden until you check.
Which term best describes a right that entitles its holder to non-interference, such as a right against assault?
Choose an answer, then check it.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris in which year?
Choose an answer, then check it.
Study tools & related lessonsYou’ll learn to · Common mistakes · Easily confused · Key vocabulary · Related
You’ll learn to
- Define a right as a claim or entitlement that generates duties in others.
- Distinguish moral rights from legal rights and explain why a right can be one without the other.
- Distinguish negative rights from positive rights and explain why the boundary between them is debated.
- Identify Hohfeld's four basic incidents - claims, privileges, powers, and immunities - and their correlatives.
- Explain the correlativity thesis that a claim-right of one person corresponds to a duty of another.
- Present the debates over universality, group rights, and conflicting rights neutrally.
Common mistakes
Assuming every right is a legal right.
Moral rights exist independently of law, and law can also create rights that many people consider morally unjustified; a right can be one without the other.
Reading "negative" and "positive" rights as "bad" and "good" rights.
The terms describe what the right requires: non-interference (negative) versus provision of a good or service (positive).
Confusing a privilege with a claim-right.
A privilege is the absence of a duty not to act; a claim-right correlates with a duty owed to you by someone else.
Assuming that if rights appear to conflict, at least one of them is not a genuine right.
Rights often appear to conflict, and philosophers disagree about whether such conflicts are real or merely apparent; the appearance of conflict does not by itself show that either claim is bogus.
Easily confused
Moral right vs. Legal right
Grounded in moral reasons versus recognized and protected by law; each can exist without the other.
Negative right vs. Positive right
Entitlement to non-interference versus entitlement to provision of a good or service; the boundary is debated.
Claim-right vs. Privilege
A right that correlates with another's duty versus the mere absence of a duty not to act.
Key vocabulary
- Right
- An entitlement or claim that others owe something: an action, a forbearance, or a recognized status.
- Moral right
- A right grounded in moral reasons, whether or not the law recognizes it.
- Legal right
- A right recognized and protected by the law of a particular jurisdiction, whether or not morality endorses it.
- Negative right
- A right to non-interference, such as a right against assault.
- Positive right
- A right to provision of some good or service, such as a right to welfare assistance.
- Claim-right
- In Hohfeld's scheme, a right that correlates with a duty owed to the right-holder.
- Privilege (liberty)
- In Hohfeld's scheme, the absence of a duty not to do something.
- Power
- In Hohfeld's scheme, the ability to alter one's own or another's rights or duties.
- Immunity
- In Hohfeld's scheme, protection against another's power to alter one's rights or duties.
- Correlativity
- The thesis that every claim-right of one person corresponds to a duty of another person.
Sources & references
- Rights — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Human Rights — Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26 — United Nations
- History of the Declaration — United Nations
EliExplains lessons are original prose written from the open, credible references above. See Copyright & Licensing.
Researched 2026-08-21
Educational content only. It is not medical, legal or professional advice. Found an error? Tell us.