Rights, Duties and Conditioning Welfare

Abstract

Somewhere between welfare to work policy and the jurisprudential analysis of rights and duties lies the third way motto of ‘no rights without responsibilities’. This paper shows how this proclamation offers no less than a new construction of one’s rights insofar as theydependon the obligations that he or she owes society. Investigating this new formulation through the established perspectives of the Interest (or Benefit) Theory and the Choice (or Will) theory sheds light on the jurisprudential background of this move, and its possible consequences. The paper then moves to describe the concrete impact that this theoretical reconstruction has on provisions embedded in welfare to work programs, and suggests that this may serve a pilot for a more comprehensive, and thus problematic, social policy. In the final section of the paper, the doctrine of ’unconstitutional conditions’ is revisited and improved in a way that, if accepted, may bar governments from diluting rights of disadvantaged groups and endangering them into becoming ‘illusory’.