rights

An Analysis of the Distribution of Rights and Duties in Communities in the Face of Complex Compensatory Correlation

Dr hab. Andrzej Stoiński

University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn

English abstract: The article examines the distribution of rights and duties of justice among entities of unequal status in their mutual relations in communities. The analyses are performed from the perspective of complex compensatory correlation, which is a dicaiological modification of the Hohfeldian legal rights correlation model. The first thesis of the article asserts that alignment of the rights and duties of entities in accordance with the compensatory correlation scheme is a necessary condition for justice in community relations. The second thesis states that an increase in the welfarist positive rights of some citizens is accompanied by an increase in the rights of the government. These proposals are juxtaposed with the image of rights and duties within the family and political community. In the case of entities in family relationships and in some political community relations, one can observe a balance between the rights and duties assigned to them. However, there are also interactions in which some entities have double duties and others have double rights, and therefore, we cannot find there a pattern suitable for a complex compensatory correlation. In such cases, there are deficiencies in the sphere of justice.

Keywords: justice, rights, duties, community, Hohfeld, complex compensatory correlation

Language: Polish

Published: Number 1(38)/2024, pp. 71-82.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2024.1.71

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Number of downloads: 99

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Contemporary Debate on John Rawls’s Political Concept of Human Rights. Selected Arguments and Positions

Mgr Jan TURLEJ

Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Kraków University of Economics

English abstract: In The Law of Peoples – published in Poland for the first time twenty years ago – John Rawls extended his theory of justice to the field of international relations. The philosopher developed the concept of the law of peoples, or the political concept of justice that applies to the norms and principles of international law and practice. As part of his concept, Rawls proposed a vision of human rights as rights that define the limits of state sovereignty. In the article, in addition to a synthetic overview of Rawls’s concept of human rights, I present selected critical arguments, formulated by John Tasioulas, Charles Beitz, James Nickel, Allen Buchanan, Martha Nussbaum, and Thomas Pogge. In the second part of the text, I discuss an attempt to defend Rawls’s views, proposed by David Reidy and Samuel Freeman. In conclusion, I summarize both lines of argument, presenting my own position.

Keywords: John Rawls, human rights, political concept of human rights, rights, state sovereignty

Language: Polish

Published: Number 1(34)/2023, pp.72-86

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280//AFPiFS.2023.1.72

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Number of downloads: 177

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Against Dignity: An Argument for a Non-Metaphysical Foundation of Animal Law

Prof. dr hab. Tomasz Pietrzykowski

University of Silesia in Katowice

English abstract: Animal protection as an emerging field of legislation needs to be constitutionalized as well as comprehensively expounded by legal scholars. As it is a growing body of regulation and accompanying legal theories, it needs to develop a solid conceptual and axiological framework, in particular a set of basic values and principles on which detailed rules are to be founded. Lacking these, the domain of animal law is still in the pre-paradigm stage and remains an assemblage of dispersed ideas, concepts and regulatory measures. It yet has to develop into a coherent whole that may grow to be a mature regulatory and doctrinal domain of the law. In order to reach this stage, it should be founded on clear theoretical and constitutional grounds. Lacking those, its further development, and effective operation may be seriously impeded. There seem to be two basic approaches that may serve as the possible foundations for a viable model of animal protection law. The first may be referred to as the “dignity” approach and the other, as the “sentientist” approach. According to the first of those two approaches, animal protection law should rely on the concept of animal dignity as its philosophical foundation. The second approach rejects the idea that the concept of animal dignity as the basis for the relevant legislation as philosophically dubious and entailing objectionable normative consequences for the scope and content of legal protections of animals. Thus, it aims rather at legal norms and policies being based directly on scientifically informed theories of sentience, evolutionarily developed nervous structures underlying cognitive and emotional capabilities or species-typical biological and psychological needs that condition the subjective well-being of a given creature. The aim of this paper is to analyse and discuss both these approaches and to argue that the former is philosophically, conceptually and practically flawed. The second approach, even despite some serious disadvantages, is therefore deemed to be preferable and more promising.

Keywords: animals, dignity, rights, law, constitution, ethics

Language: English

Published: Number 2(27)/2021, pp. 69-82.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2021.2.69

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Number of downloads: 301

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.