← Chapter 6
Applied Ethics · Chapter 6

The Rights Constructor

Wesley Hohfeld showed in 1913 that the word right is doing four different jobs — claim, liberty, power, immunity — and that each has a different correlative in somebody else. Pick an everyday assertion, then build it into a proper relation: name the incident, name the other party, name what that party’s position actually is. If you cannot fill all three slots, you are asserting a wish, not a right.

1 · Pick something someone says

2 · Build the relation

Which Hohfeldian incident is this?
Who is on the other end of it?
And what exactly is their position?

The relation you have built

Hohfeld’s four incidents and their correlatives