The Anatomy of Rights

Abstract

Rights have an essential connection to the making of claims — to have a right, one must claim it, either for oneself or in the name of another (Douzinas, 2000; Campbell, 2006; Bourke, 2011), and a right is itself a particular kind of claim (Hohfeld, 1964; Sunstein, 1999). In other words, it is of the essence of rights to both be claimed (Wellman, 1985, 1997) and institute a new sequence of claims (Feinberg, 1966). Similarly, the mechanisms of political representation are centered around the making of claims which specify both the subject and the representative (see Chapter 1). Political subjectivity finds one possible expression in the back and forth of representation — claims are made and revised, and in the process the subjects of representation (on both sides of the relation) are fashioned.