Building on many years of scholarship, Matthew H. Kramer sets out his definitive philosophical investigation of rights and rights-holding with this monograph, as he sometimes revisits and modifies his previous positions. Beginning with the analytical schema propounded by the American legal theorist Wesley Hohfeld, the book provides a defence of the proposition that every claim-right with a certain content is correlative to at least one duty with the same content, and that every duty with a certain content is correlative to at least one claim-right with the same content. The volume then addresses the longstanding debates over the nature of right-holding, with a sustained defense of the Interest Theory and with some innovative critiques of the Will Theory. Finally, it considers the ethical and analytical questions involved in determining who can hold claim-rights at all. It argues that the beings capable of holding claim-rights include not only human adults of sound mind, but also all other living human beings, many dead people, and all future generations of people, along with most non-human animals. Addressing some major topics within moral, legal, and political philosophy, Rights and Right-Holding: A Philosophical Investigation will be a key work for philosophers and academic lawyers alike.

An eminent constitutional scholar reveals how our approach to rights is dividing America, and shows how we can build a better system of justice.

Culture and religion are overlapping phenomena: cultures are normally understood to subsume religions, and religions are very often central to cultures. The two are particularly closely associated when we focus on the kinds of difference that generate issues for public policy. The world has always been culturally and religiously diverse, but recent movements of population have intensified the internal diversity of societies. That increased diversity has presented societies with a number of pressing questions. How much should cultural differences matter? Can they and should they be treated impartially? Should they receive equal recognition and what sort of recognition might that be? Are cultural and religious differences at odds with human rights thinking or do universal human rights demand respect for those differences? When the demands of a religious faith clash with those of a society's rules, which should take precedence? Should the religious have to endure whatever burdens their beliefs bring their way, or should they be accommodated so that their religious faith does not become a source of social disadvantage? Should they have to put up with unwelcome treatments of their beliefs or should they be protected from the offensive and the disrespectful? These are some of the many issues examined in Culture, Religion and Rights.

This original collection of jurisprudential essays furthers our understanding of the nature of rights. In Part 1, Halpin considers the value of Hohfeldian neutrality when theorising about law in general, and legal rights in particular, and Kurki focuses on Hohfeld's operative notion of power. In Part 2, Kramer rebuts Wenar's objections to his Interest Theory of rights, and May provides a comparative defence of the Interest Theory against Wenar's Kind-Desire theory of claim-rights. Penner then pursues legal doctrine, focusing on whether judges hold the powers of their office as rights, an issue over which Wenar and Kramer have clashed. Sreenivasan, utilising a novel test case involving pure public goods, argues that the third party beneficiary objection to the Interest Theory is fatal. McBride builds on Sreenivasan's Hybrid Theory of claim-rights to construct his new Tracking Theory of rights. Cruft then argues that the best extant versions of the Interest and Will Theories of rights cannot avoid a form of circularity, and Van Duffel argues that meeting four adequacy constraints, which he proposes, counts in favour of any theory of rights. In Part 3, Andersson proposes a tie breaking procedure for rights conflicts in the applied realm of politics, and Steiner concludes by alleging that Kant's principle of right, a standard of corrective justice, has distributive implications. 'A fine collection of cutting-edge essays on the most important normative concept of modernity.' Professor Leif Wenar, King's College London 'This important collection proceeds much beyond the famous 1998 A Debate Over Rights which sets the stage for the debates concerning rights since then. It explores three aspects of rights. First it re-examines the Hohfeldian classification and highlights its importance and relevance. Second it investigates and develops the debates between the interest and the will theory. It includes essays by the main established proponents of these two positions as well as essays by newcomers to this field. The different essays in this part address each other in ways which sharpen and clarify the disagreements and provide new original arguments for the contending views. Last, it provides a new perspective on the debates concerning conflicts of rights and the ways to overcome them. This collection will no doubt dominate the future conceptual discussions concerning the nature of rights and their role in political theory.' Professor Alon Harel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

What is the role of ethno-cultural groups in human rights discourse? Under international human rights law, standards are unclear and ambivalent, while traditional analyses have often failed to elucidate and unpack the conceptual, legal, and policy complexities involved. In Ethno-Cultural Diversity and Human Rights, prominent experts chart new territory by addressing contested dimensions of the field. They include the impact of collective interests on rights discourse and nation-building, international law’s responses to group demands for decision-making authority, and concerns for immigration, intersectionality, and peacebuilding. Drawing from diverse scholarship in international law, legal and moral philosophy, and political science, this volume will be essential reading for scholars and practitioners of human rights, diversity, and conflict management.

The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law brings together specially commissioned essays by twenty-six of the foremost legal theorists currently writing, to provide a state-of-the-art overview of jurisprudential scholarship.

Professor Matthew Kramer is one of the most important legal philosophers of our time - even if the label 'legal philosopher' does not do justice to the breadth of his work. This collection of essays brings together esteemed philosophers, as well as junior scholars, to critically assess Kramer's philosophy. The contributions focus on Kramer's work on legal philosophy, metaethics, normative ethics, and political philosophy. The volume is divided into six parts, each focusing on different aspect of Kramer's work. The first part, Rights and Right-holding, contains five essays addressing Kramer's work on rights and right-holding, including the Hohfeldian analysis and the interest theory of right-holding. The four essays in the second part, General Jurisprudence, focus on Kramer's work in general jurisprudence, from the compatibility of legal positivism with universal legal error, to his robust defense of inclusive legal positivism, concluding with reflections on his writings on the rule of law. The third part, General Matters of Ethics, contains two essays addressing Kramer's metaethical work on moral realism as a moral doctrine. The fourth and fifth parts, Freedom and Liberalism, have four essays falling within political philosophy, probing Kramer's work on negative freedom and political liberalism, respectively. The sixth part, Applied Ethics, contains two essays on Kramer's work on capital punishment and freedom of expression. The collection is rounded off by reflections on, and replies to, the contributions by Kramer himself.

In this volume, essays by an international roster of contributors evaluate the political philosophy of contemporary philosopher Hillel Steiner. The study concludes with a response by Steiner himself.

What does it mean to have a right? Previous answers to this question fall into two groups: interest/benefit theories of rights and choice/will theories. This book proposes an alternative to these traditional views: the justified-constraint theory of rights, which avoids the pitfalls of earlier theories, and solves the puzzle of the relational nature of rights. The analysis shows that this theory applies without modification to past, present and future beings.

This volume tackles a quickly-evolving field of inquiry, mapping the existing discourse as part of a general attempt to place current developments in historical context; at the same time, breaking new ground in taking on novel subjects and pursuing fresh approaches. The term "A.I." is used to refer to a broad range of phenomena, from machine learning and data mining to artificial general intelligence. The recent advent of more sophisticated AI systems, which function with partial or full autonomy and are capable of tasks which require learning and 'intelligence', presents difficult ethical questions, and has drawn concerns from many quarters about individual and societal welfare, democratic decision-making, moral agency, and the prevention of harm. This work ranges from explorations of normative constraints on specific applications of machine learning algorithms today-in everyday medical practice, for instance-to reflections on the (potential) status of AI as a form of consciousness with attendant rights and duties and, more generally still, on the conceptual terms and frameworks necessarily to understand tasks requiring intelligence, whether "human" or "A.I."