Rights and Duties Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The will theory was notably propagated by Hart.

The will (or choice) theory says a right is a protected choice: the right-holder has control over another's duty and may enforce or waive it. Kant and Savigny held this view, and in modern jurisprudence it is chiefly associated with H. L. A. Hart.

Bentham, Jhering and Raz are the leading names of the rival interest theory, which says a right protects an interest of the right-holder. Jhering called rights 'legally protected interests', and Raz defines a right by an interest sufficient to hold another under a duty.

Answer: A

The jural correlative of power is liability.

In Hohfeld's scheme of jural relations, each legal position has a correlative held by another person: right and duty, privilege and no-right, power and liability, immunity and disability. If A has a power to change B's legal position (for example, to accept an offer and so bind the offeror), B is under a liability to have that position changed.

Duty is the correlative of right, and disability is the correlative of immunity (and the opposite of power). Immunity is itself the opposite of liability, not the correlative of power.

Answer: A

The jural opposite of power is disability.

In Hohfeld's scheme of jural relations, each concept has a correlative and an opposite. The four pairs of opposites are right and no-right, privilege and duty, power and disability, and immunity and liability. A power is the legal ability to change legal relations; a disability is the absence of that ability.

Liability is the correlative of power (the position of the person whose legal relations the power-holder can change), not its opposite. Privilege is the opposite of duty, and immunity the opposite of liability.

Answer: B

The keyed answer is Gerber. I could not trace this quotation to a published source, so the explanation says what could and could not be confirmed.

Not confirmed: that the sentence is Gerber's. Searches for the wording, alone and with each name, found nothing, so the attribution rests on the University's key.

What can be said about the others is general. H.L.A. Hart is the author of the choice (will) theory of rights, in which a right-holder controls the correlative duty. Joseph Raz defends the interest theory, in which a right is the ground of a duty. Neil MacCormick, here printed 'MacCormik', also wrote on the interest theory of rights. All three wrote about what it is to have a right; the quoted sentence separates the substance of a right from the power to claim it, and nothing found links it to any of them. Nothing found shows the key to be wrong.

Answer: D

The jural correlative of a right is a duty.

In Hohfeld's scheme of fundamental legal relations, correlatives are two sides of the same relation between two persons: if A has a right (claim) that B do something, B has a duty to A to do it. The four pairs of correlatives are right-duty, privilege-no right, power-liability and immunity-disability.

Privilege (liberty) and power are separate entitlements with their own correlatives. 'No right' is the correlative of privilege, and the jural opposite of right, not its correlative.