Cambridge Legal Theory Discussion Group: 'David A. Simon: The Structure of Legal Rights' CANCELLED

Abstract

Legal rights have a common conceptual structure. Across all areas of law, this structure is hidden in plain sight. By bringing this structure into view, I aim, like Hohfeld, “to emphasize certain oft-neglected matters that may aid in the understanding an in the solution of practical, every-day problems of the law.” My method for doing so, however, is different. Unlike Hohfeld, I am not interested in distinguishing jural conceptual correlates, or showing how such categories are misused by judges and lawyers. Nor am I concerned with the transcendent properties that makes one thing a “right” – or even a legal right – and another something else. My task, instead, is to trace the outlines of the internal structure of rights as they exist in modern Western legal systems. To do this I make a significant but necessary assumption: that a legal right a is the ability to bring a successful claim in a court of law. Once this is assumed, the conceptual structure of legal rights emerges: they are triadic, tiered, causal, and interactive. Using this conceptual apparatus, I show how legal disputes are reducible to arguments about the integrity and composition of this structure. Additionally, I show how this conceptual structure can sharpen legal analysis and generate new lines of inquiry.