Ch. 1

What came first, the desire to find a picture that demonstrated the theme of the class or your desire to use a picture of the dogs?

How do we ground legal rights? How do we want legal rights to be grounded? I think, more often than not, the average college-educated person is hesitant to express a desire for law (and therefore rights) to be grounded in morality. Many are jaded by claims from the right about the immorality of homosexuality and other social practices. Thus, we argue, keep morality and legality separate. Is it not actually the case, though, that we are upset because we think morality has been inaccurately dictated? When I make an argument for welfare policy, for example, I am clearly making a moral claim. There is a certain baseline standard of living that all people deserve. The counterargument generally makes an appeal to one's moral right to the fruit of their labor. Is most of our legal rights discourse really a veiled discussion about moral rights?

There are some interesting concerns raised in this chapter that complicate the issue for me. Wellman references the principle that there are sometimes too many cooks in the kitchen in magical legal rights land--that we have overlapping protections (4). He also argues that perhaps rights lead to unintended negative consequences. Are rights utilitarian? That is, does the basis of a legal (or moral) right stem from the benefits it confers or from some other source? If it is true that we have certain rights in virtue of being human, do those rights go away when they are no longer utilitarian for the individual? Perhaps Wellman's example is just poor. Do we really feel like the right to sexual harassment is poor because it could potentially lead to conflict between employer and employee? I think, in most instances, sexual harassment is more definable and intentional than Wellman does. This sentence is just odd to me: "the legal rights against sexual harassment perverts what often could and always should be a cooperative and congenial personal relationship in the workplace" (5).

It is also new to be to conceptualize the politicization of ights. Wellman seems to suggest that it might be a poor decision to invoke the language of rights even if a right is being violated (6). At the very least, it seems, he believes the "proliferation of rights discourse" should be done only if it is utilitarian. I understand his contention and appeal to the U.N. Declaration as an example of the unnecessary proliferation of rights (and the use of rights language). Does it not also cheapen the concept of rights to ignore a discussion of rights when one could be had?

I'm sort of surprised that this chapter (and class) didn't really address what we understand a "right" to be. Wellman discusses what a legal right is but not much on the more general concept of moral rights. I guess I do think of rights as entitlements, claims--against other people, against ruling bodies. It protects something htat shouldn't be violated. In legal terms, it means that I should be able to make a claim to prevent its violation. It is both freedom "from" and freedom "to." How does everyone else understand the concept of a "right?"