Introduction
Although the concept of rights is rather complex, there is considerable agreement about what might be included in a preliminary characterization. For example, there is widespread consensus that rights (understood as the normative capacity of persons to enter into certain ways of acting or of being treated) are things that (i) can be distributed, more or less equally, on an individual basis to each and all of those who are relevantly said to be rightholders. (ii) Most people think that rights are, in some sense, justified. But there is considerable controversy as to what, precisely, is the proper focus of justification. (iii) For a final example, the idea that rights always involve some sort of significant normative direction of the behavior of others (though it gives rise to important interpretive issues) would, as stated, appear to be almost universally agreed upon.
Concepts and Conceptions
The characterization of rights I offered above identifies three of the most...
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References
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Martin, R. (2017). Conceptions of Rights in Recent Anglo-American Philosophy. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_369-1
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