Jurisprudence of Legal Rights and Duties

Abstract

Rights and justice are interchangeably used in many respects, which are entitled by the person who can carry it. Justice administration is established for the protection of rights and continuity of duty. Jurisprudence deals with the issues of rights or duty. All legally permitted actions are rights whereas duty refers to no wrong. Respect to the right holder is the duty. There are human rights, fundamental rights, legal rights, and moral rights etc. Elements of Legal rights are subject of right, subject of duty, content of right, acts, and title. There are three theories of rights and duties as will theory, interest theory and state protection theory. Will theory accepts every person as sovereign in micro level, interest theory regards rights as legally protected interest and obligation and state protection theory assumes that all the rights are the concession granted by the state through law. Hence, legal rights can define as right in rem and right in personam, personal right and proprietary right, positive right and negative right, principal right and accessories right, perfect right and imperfect right, right in repropria and right in realiena, vested right and contingent right, legal right and equitable right, corporeal right and incorporeal right, antecedent right and remedial right, primary right and secondary right, fundamental right and legal right etc. Duty exists where right exists so the classification of legal duty is similar as legal rights. Stoics followed the concept of religion as humans have only duty but not of rights. Duguit also argues for same. For the Scandinavian Realist, rights, duties, obligation and justice are metaphysics; so they are meaningless. However, there are both right based approach and duty based approach accepted in contemporary society. Rights and duties are crucial part of legislation and case law. Ultimate purpose of law is either determining rights or duties. According to Hohfeld, rights and duties are classified into jural correlative, jural contradictory and jural opposite. There are vivid forms of rights i.e. claim/rights, liberty/privileges, power and immunity whereas forms of duty varies as duty, no right, liability and disability etc. However, all the jurisprudence addresses the method of determining rights and duties of the people. For Dworkin, a right performs as a trump and for John Rawls it refers to liberty and distributive justice. Nevertheless, rights and duties are essential building blocks of legislation and case law to resolve dispute among various parties and essence of the law.