Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Rights #2

Chapter 3 & 4

My understanding of Glendon’s chapter 3 is the creation of the right to privacy. Nowhere in the constitution does it state the right to privacy. However, due to personal values about the right to property and rhetoric of the law, the notion of right to privacy was created. Surprisingly enough, on page 50, the creation of privacy rights started off from the constant gazes of the paparazzi. Two lawyers wrote an article about the right to privacy to the Harvard Law Review. On page 52, there was a quote that caught my attention. “Thought the right to privacy, the right to life had now blossomed into ‘the right to enjoy life,-the right to be let alone.’” It is reasonable to understand the moment to right to property was created; also gave creation of a personal sphere. Thus, when the land and the walls of a house are gone, all that is left is the “invisible sphere” (52). In a sense, the right to privacy is a narrow concept of the right to property. Nevertheless, the right of privacy wasn’t recognized until the landmark case of Roe v. Wade, where the right to life meant the right to privacy to either gave birth or not.
In chapter 4, responsibility comes into play in right. It was surprise, but it should been obvious to me, that legal rights do not creates duties, only protection and claims. I found the example of the swimmer and the baby to be interesting and clever, at the same time horrible (78). Yet, there is nothing in the law or the constitution that mentions anything about duty to another. This, then, make me understand clearly about the difference between the legal rights and moral right. With moral rights, a person has a right to something; at the same time creates a duty to another that s/he ought to do or not do. Legal rights, to me, only seem to specific and offer protection and justification about claim to something. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to understand that these to concepts could be misunderstood as the same, since there are both “rights.”

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