From the Fundamental Legal Conceptions of Hohfeld to Legal Relations: Refining the Enrichment of Solely Deontic Legal Relations

Abstract

The Hohfeldian fundamental legal conceptions that deal with solely deontic LEGAL RELATIONS, the duty/privilege and right/no-right pairs, require not only an adequate definition of agency for the person who is obligated or permitted to act, but also the same of patiency for the person to-or-for whom that action is directed. Person-i’s DUTY to see-to-it-that that state-of-affairs-s is so for the benefit of person-j is defined here in terms of a deontic OBLIGATION operation and DONE-BY (D2) and DONE-FOR (D4) relations between a state of affairs and persons. This paper is a refinement of the author’s earlier efforts to modify, extend, and enrich Hohfeld’s fundamental legal conceptions into a more general notion of LEGAL RELATIONS (defined concepts are expressed in all capital letters.) In particular, the agency concept of DONE-BY is being brought into closer conformity with Belnap’s emerging stit logic, with the modifications of deontic logic accompanying such changes. The S4–D2 action modal logic considered here is intended to be a part of the A-HOHFELD logic in which LEGAL RELATIONS are defined and from which a representation language called the A-HOHFELD language is derived. The A-HOHFELD language is being used as a representation language for constructing MINT (Multiple INTerpretation) interpretation-assistance systems for helping lawyers to detect alternative structural interpretations of sets of legal rules.