HONR 301 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Negative And Positive Rights
Document Summary
Some societies (american society) treat subsistence rights and secondary to security rights. Refuting this argument: security rights are negative rights and subsistence rights are positive rights so subsistence rights are secondary. Subsistence rights and security rights are very distinct. Positive rights and negative rights are very distinct. Positive rights involve correlative duties to act in a certain way, and negative rights involve correlative duties to refrain from acting in a certain way. Security rights may seem negative, but actually involve a lot of positive action. Creation of entities to protect individuals: police, courts, jails, training facilities for police, taxes to support entities. These rights are not just right to be left alone, but right to have something put in place to protect people (social guarantees against standard threats) Core of the right involves negative measures but how to achieve that requires positive measures. Fulfillment of subsistence rights requires 2 actions.
