Rowan Cruft

Against Individualistic Justifications of Property Rights

In this article I argue that, despite the views of such theorists as Locke, Hart and Raz, most of a person’s property rights cannot be individualistically justified. Instead most property rights, if justified at all, must be justified on non-individualistic (e.g. consequentialist) grounds. This, I suggest, implies that most property rights cannot be morally fundamental ‘human rights’. What, if anything, justifies the existence of property rights? In my view, property rights are justified because they serve the collective interest. Against this, many theorists regard the justification of property rights as individualistic. I show in this article that most property rights cannot be individualistically justified. Furthermore, I argue that individualistic justification is the hallmark of those especially morally important rights that we call ‘human rights’. Hence because most property rights cannot be individualistically justified, most property rights cannot be human rights. My concept, ‘individualistic justification’, refers to an approach to rights adopted by a range of thinkers including Locke, Hart and Raz, an approach that contrasts with consequentialist, communitarian and contractualist accounts of the justification of rights. A person P’s right R is individualistically justified if and only if: 1. Some genuine feature F of P is of sufficient intrinsic importance on its own to constitute a powerful pro tanto reason in favour of P’s holding a right that will protect, serve or in some other way ensure respect for F ‐ and R is such a right. 2. This pro tanto reason is undefeated and hence R is justified. Three terms in the definition merit explanation. (a) Genuine .A right is only individualistically justified if it is justified on the basis of some genuine feature of its holder such as P’s interest in bodily integrity, rather than some gimmicky relational feature such as P’s-being-such-that-P’s-holding-R-would-serve-the-collectiveinterest. To rule out justifications of the latter type, one should read ‘genuine feature’ as referring to features of P whose existence is logically (but not necessarily causally) independent of the existence of P’s wider community, and of the collective interest. (b) Intrinsic.

Are Property Rights Ever Basic Human Rights

Stealing from someone is not as bad as torturing, killing or raping them. But is the difference between theft and these fundamental violations simply a difference in degree (of severity)? I begin this article by outlining several ways in which the moral grounds for property rights differ in kind from those for basic human rights, differences that underpin and explain the difference in severity. I go on to ask whether, despite these differences, there might be some property rights that we should still classify as basic human rights.

Human Rights, Individualism and Cultural Diversity

Abstract Two features of human‐rights discourse are often targeted for criticism: its universalism and its individualism. Both features, it is usually claimed, illegitimately overlook the significance of cultural diversity. In this essay I argue that individualism is incompatible with universalism and compatible with cultural diversity. Thus I defend the view that human rights are individualistically justified, and I argue that it follows from this that human rights are in an important sense non‐universal. I go on to show how my non‐universalist conclusion can provide the basis for a retort to those who appeal to facts about cultural diversity in order to criticise human rights discourse.

Human Rights Law Without Natural Moral Rights

The Heart of Human Rights, Allen E. Buchanan, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, 336 pp. ISBN 9780199325382