Can Rights Go Wrong?

Invoking rights to champion a cause is a popular approach because it strikes a firm tone – declaring that the rights in question must be respected unconditionally.  To assert a right is to be like a judge banging the gavel – it is the end of discussion.  Case closed, except of course it isn’t.

 

Rights are not metaphysical entities that a few bright Platonic minds can grasp and anyone not recognising them have only got their intellectual limitations to blame.  They are signifiers of legal, political, and/or moral agreement that prevails in a given society.  Claims such as ‘no one in this country should be tortured’, or ‘every citizen should be supported in overcoming poor health’, may have varying degrees of moral backing amongst the general public, embedded in the political culture in some nation but not others, and translated into legal commitments with different specific implications.

 

If the basis for determining rights is ignored, then the invocation if rights can easily become an arbitrary exercise.  Once we discard as irrelevant what legal, political, or moral consensus there actually is, then ‘rights’ cease to be anchored to social reality.  Different people can insist they have a right to this or that, and interpret what they can expect from having that right in any way they wish without reference to any process or arrangement that exists outside their own mind.

 

Many people who use the language of rights in aid of compassion, justice, or fairness are suspicious of demands to unpack the basis of the rights they claim.  They think their case might get diluted if they engage with what agreement there really is in terms of current legal, political, and moral expectations.  They want to block off any challenge by hoisting the banner of ‘rights’.  

 

But if that is the position they want to keep to, it also opens the door for other people (who care little for compassion, justice, or fairness) to invoke rights in a similarly absolutist way.  These people will firmly claim, for example, that they have a right to hire and fire workers without any intervention from anyone else; they have a right to say what they like even if others regard it as spreading lies and hatred; they have a right to do business in any way they wish irrespective of the concerns of ‘do-gooders’; they have a right to live in a neighbourhood of their own ‘kind’; or they have a right to treat their own children as they see fit no matter how vile or cruel others may consider that treatment.

 

Ultimately, rights are not absolute licences that can be plucked out of metaphysical thin air and deployed to secure whatever someone wants.  Rights have to be justified, their implications have to be assessed, and what is to be granted as entitlements needs to be formulated with care.  To differentiate rights that ought to be safeguarded from rights that are asserted without legitimate foundations, we have to go beyond the surface language of rights and consider the legal, political, and moral positions that exist in society.  Rather than holding up ‘rights’ as some immutable shield against critical discussions, we should recognise the reality in which we need to persuade, challenge, campaign for the changing of attitudes and arrangements to further what we can obtain wider agreement in advancing the values we share.