The Correlativity of Rights and Duties

Author(s): David Lyons

Source: Noûs , Feb., 1970, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Feb., 1970), pp. 45-55
Published by: Wiley

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 FOURTH SYMPOSIUM

The Correlativity of Rights and Duties'

DAVID LYONS
CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Commentators: MARcus SINGER UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

DAViD BRAYBROOKE DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY

It is commonly held that rights "correlate" with duties.2 By

this is usually meant at least that rights imply duties (even if not
all duties imply rights) and also that claims of individual rights
need not be recognized unless backed by proof that corresponding
obligations obtain. Such a doctrine of correlativity also forms part
of the view that rights must be understood or analyzed in terms of
duty or obligation.3
I shall examine this doctrine, beginning with a clear case of
"correlativity," turning then to cases that diverge from it signifi-
cantly. I argue that it is at best misleading to say that rights gener-
ally "correlate" with duties.4 For the implications between them
1 To be presented in an A.P.A. symposium on Rights and Duties, May,
1970. Commentators will be D. Braybrooke and M. Singer.
2 See for example Bentham, Works, III, p. 159 and many recent writers
including S. I. Benn and R. S. Peters, Social Principles and the Democratic
State, pp. lOlf; R. B. Brandt, Ethical Theory: 433-441; E. F. Carritt, Ethical
and Political Thinking, p. 77; R. Grice, The Grounds of Moral Judgment:
37f; J. Hospers, Human Conduct, p. 386; W. D. Lamont, The Principles of
Moral Judgment: 80-95; W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good: 48-56.
8 The differences between having a duty and being under an obligation
are, I think, peripheral to this discussion and can be ignored. I assume
throughout that moral and legal rights are analogous.
4 Compare G. Williams, "The Concept of a Legal Liberty," Columbia
Law Review, LVI (1956): 1129-1150. For the groundbreaking work on rights
by jurists, one should start with W. N. Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Concep-
tions.

45

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 46 NOCNS

vary substan
that all righ
common ele
"correlations

The following should exemplify the correlation of rights with

duties. Suppose that Bernard owes Alvin ten dollars: we then have
equal reason to ascribe a right to Alvin and a corresponding obli-
gation to Bemard. Bemard's obligation is to pay Alvin ten dollars;
but his obligation is also to Alvin-or, as we say, it is "owed" to
Alvin in particular.r Alvin has a corresponding right, to be paid ten
dollars by Bernard, which is held "against" him specifically.
Alvin's right and Bernard's obligation do not merely coexist:
their coexistence is necessary, not contingent. Neither the right nor
the obligation could arise without the other, and if one is dis-
charged, waived, cancelled, voided, forfeited or otherwise ex-
tinguished the other must be extinguished as well. For the "ground"
of the obligation-the undischarged debt-is the "title" of the
right.
This right and obligation entail one another. A statement
ascribing one warrants fully an inference to the other, without
appeal to contingent facts or substantive principles. It is not that
facts or principles have no bearing on the case: asisertions of the
right or obligation may presuppose principles deriving them from
certain kinds of fact. But, if we are given either the right or the
obligation we can infer the existence of the other.
Moreover, such implications are, as we might say, specific
and the correlations determinate. A full statement of the right or
the obligation implies a full specification of the other. It is not that
Alvin's right implies merely that there is some coexisting obligation,
but that Alvin's having this particular right implies that Bernard is
under an obligation, to Alvin, to pay him ten dollars (and vice
versa).
These tight correlations are quite common. They occur not
only when debts (in the ordinary sense) are owed but also when
certain other relations exist between two or more individuals-as a

5 See H. L. A. Hart, "Are There Any Natural Rights?", Philosophical

Review, LXIV (1955): 179-181, and J. Feinberg, "Duties, Rights, and
Claims," American Philosophical Quarterly, III (1966): 137-144.

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THE CORRELATIVITY OF RIGHTS AND DUTIES 47

consequence, for example, of promises and contracts, wrongful in-

juries that require reparation, relationships such as parent to child
and teacher to student. In such cases it seems natural to speak not
only of A's having certain rights but of his having them "against"
B in particular and likewise of B's reciprocally "owing" an obliga-
tion to A.
There is, then, a familiar class of cases which can sensibly
be talked about in terms of the "correlations" of rights and duties,
and it is tempting to suppose that whenever "rights"and "duties" or
"obligations" can be ascribed the pattern will recur. But while there
are various implications between rights and duties, the pattern just
sketched does not arise whenever rights and duties obtain. Before
comparing our first kind of case to others, however, let us consider
it more closely.
The doctrine of correlativity sometimes assumes a particularly
strong form, when it is held that rights and duties do not merely
imply one another but do so because they are conceptual correla-
tives. This idea is that "there can be no right without a correspond-
ing duty, or duty without a corresponding right, any more than
there can be a husband without a wife, or a father without a child."6
The suggestion is most plausible, however, when restricted to cases
like our original one, where rights are held "against" and duties
"owed" specific individuals. The relation here is like that between
"right" and "left." Just as statements of the form "A is to the right
of B" and "B is to the left of A" entail one another in virtue of the
correlative meanings of "to the right of' and "to the left of," so a
statement of the form "A has a right against B" implies and is im-
plied by a statement of the form "B has a duty (or, is under an
obligation) to A" in virtue of the correlative meanings of "has a
right against" and "has a duty (is under an obligation) to."
But this cannot be all there is to it, for the propositional
functions, so stated, are incomplete. Rights and duties not only
connect ordered pairs (or sets) of persons; they also have contents.
By "contents" I mean, what it is that A has a right to and what it is
that B has a duty or obligation to do. These must also have a
definite relation if we are to be able to infer the right or the obliga-
tion from the other directly, and a fortiori if rights and duties are
to be regarded, even in this limited class of cases, as conceptual
correlatives. For just as Alvin's right against Bernard does not

6 Salmond on Jurisprudence ( 11th edn., by G. Williams), p. 264.

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 48 NODS

correlate with Dana's obligation to Charles, so Alvin's right to be

paid ten dollars by Bernard does not correlate with Bernard's obli-
gation to apologize to Alvin. There can be independent relations
of rights and duties between the same two persons.
If A's right and B's obligation entail one another as we are
supposing, there should be a formal rule connecting their contents.
Examples suggest such a rule: A's right to be obeyed by B links with
B's duty to obey A, just as Alvin's right to be paid by Bernard goes
with Bernard's obligation to pay Alvin. The rule is that the expres-
sion of the content of the right is related to the expression of the
content of the obligation as the passive is related to the active
voice.7 Were this the rule we could reasonably say that the right
and the obligation have the same content, for they would both
concern (in just verbally different ways) some required behavior
of B's with respect to A. This would support the thesis of con-
ceptual correlativity and explain why it is so clear not only that
such rights imply corresponding obligations but also what those
obligations are and upon whom they are incumbent.
There are complications I cannot deal with here. I have
sketched a notion of "conceptual correlativity" restricted to rights
held "against" and duties or obligations "owed" to specific persons.
These do not exhaust the classes of rights and obligations: such
restrictions need explaining and justifying. The notion is also
restricted to "passive" rights and "active" obligations; and one
might wonder whether some "active" rights do not also correlate
with obligations. I shall not try to answer this, but I shall argue that
some "active" rights (rights to do things) do not fit the pattern
delineated.
Before going on, finally, I wish to protect my limited claims
against possible objections to my characterization of Alvin's right
and thus to the formal rule and the restricted thesis of conceptual
correlativity. Some may think it more felicitous to say that Alvin
has a right to expect or demand payment than a right to be paid. But
"expect" is too weak: one might have a right to expect money even
if none is owed; and if there is a debt, the right is not just to expect
payment but (one is tempted to say) to the money itself. This goes
too far, of course, for the right is not to any specific bit of cash
but only to payment of a certain amount-my way of describing it.
"Demand" seems too strong: one does not have a right to demand

'7 Compare M. Radin, "A Restatement of Hohfeld," Harvard Law Re-

view, LI (1938), p. 1150.

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THE COREELATIVITY OF RIGHTS AND DUTIES 49

payment unless one's debtor fails or at least

in other words, does not respect one's right
possible referent of "right to demand payme
has to refuse to forgive a debt-which comple
has to forgive it, both of which seem but consti
right to be paid. These objections thus seem t
Nevertheless, it might be thought that a
ten dollars by Bernard" could not be the one
Bernard's obligation to pay Alvin, for anyone
so described whether or not Bernard owes hi
is mistaken: Alvin's right can be described as
Bernard"-which indicates that Alvin has a leg
press or waive as he chooses. The right of a no
cannot be qualified as a right "against Bernar
such special claim relation (and it is more na
right to receive or accept money anyway).
Consequently, I see no reason to redescrib
shall assume that such rights and obligations
the same coin.

II

In the sort of case with which we began, therefore, to say

that someone has a right seems just another way of saying that
someone else is under a certain type of obligation. Let us compare
that with a new example. Suppose that Alvin is atop a soap box
speaking to a crowd against United States military involvement in
Vietnam. His act is perfectly lawful, but he is assaulted by some
private citizens, driven from the box and silenced. Their behavior
is unlawful and constitutes unwarranted and prohibited interference
with the exercise of his legal rights. In saying this we may refer
to his general right of free speech or to a specific right to stand
there addressing the crowd. In either case the right might be
construed as a right to do something. How is that to be understood?
A common view is that such a right consists of an area of
free choice protected by prohibitions against interference. For
example, to say that Alvin has a legal right to do X is, on this
view, to say that (1) it is not unlawful for Alvin to do X (or, per-
haps, to refrain from doing it) and (2) it is unlawful for others
to interfere with Alvin's doing X. But this needs adjusting if we
seek a schema that could be applied to moral rights as well. We

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 50 NO*S

cannot simply substitute "immoral" for "unlawful" in (1) because

we should allow in morals (what we may not need to allow in
law) that there are rights it can be wrong to exercise. We might
say that there is a nonvacuous presumption which must be rebutted
before it can be shown that Alvin's doing X is wrong. But our argu-
ment does not require us to pursue this.
Can such rights be assimilated to those with which we began?
I think not. I shall note some counter-indications and then develop
one particular difficulty. To be assimilated, it must be the case that
the assertion of Alvin's right to stand on the soap box addressing
the crowd is equivalent to the assertion of correlative obligations
incumbent on others. There is at once a difficulty I shall mention
and waive. It is not clear that the relevant prohibitions (against
assault, and so on) are properly characterized as "duties" or
"obligations";8 but unless they are there is no chance of construing
such rights on the pattern of our first example. It is also unclear that
assertions of these "obligations" exhaust the content of the right;
for such "active" rights seem to say in part that the behavior in
question is at least prima facie permissible or unobjectionable; while
Alvin's right to be paid says no such a thing about his own behavior.
Also, one who emphasizes the "free choice" element of "active"
rights might think it comparable to the "free choice" enjoyed by
Alvin; but the latter is the private "power" or "capacity" he has to
change his relation to Bernard-by forgiving the debt, waiving his
right and cancelling Bernard's obligation or refusing to do so.
Nothing corresponds to this in the sort of 'active" right we are
considering.
What I wish to scrutinize more closely, however, is the view
that the prohibitions on others' behavior constitute not only an
obligation but also one that stands to "active" rights just as Bernard's
obligation to pay Alvin correlates with Alvin's right. Before pro-
ceeding, a digression to underscore my general thesis that rights
relate in different ways to obligations.
Alvin's Constitutional right of free speech cannot be construed
as an area of free choice protected by others' obligations. This right
is conferred by the First Amendment, which deprives Congress and
other governmental agencies of the authority (tthe legislative
"power or "capacity") to enact laws requiring or prohibiting
speech of certain kinds (among other things). If the Supreme

8 See Hart, op. cit., 178 and 181, and also his "Legal and Moral Obliga-
tion," in Essays in Moral Philosophy (ed. by Melden).

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 THE CORRELATIVITY OF RIGHTS AND DUTIES 51

Court reviews such a law it finds it null and void, with no legal
effect.
Now it is easy to confuse this right with an area of free
choice protected by prohibitions against interference, for the latter
can be inferred from the former and standing conditions. If Congress
cannot restrict one's speech then it is not unlawful for one to speak
or remain silent; and since one is generally protected against inter-
ference (as I shall argue) others also have "obligations not to inter-
fere." But such Constitutional rights are not the same as these
protected areas of choice since we could lose the former and retain
the latter. To see this, imagine the First Amendment repealed: then
Congress would acquire the "power" to enact legally binding laws
restricting speech now unrestrictable. But Congress could have
this power without exercising it, and thus it could happen that
speech was no more restricted than it is right now and that one's
speaking and remaining silent were equally lawful and protected
against interference even though we could no longer truly say that
we have Constitutional rights of free speech.
These Constitutional rights exemplify what some jurists call
"immunities,"9 for to assert them is to say that protected areas of
speech cannot be taken away. Alvin's Constitutional right has a
conceptual correlative: but it is not an obligation; it is a legislative
"disability," the assertion of which says that Congress is not em-
powered to enact certain laws.
It may still be tempting to search for 'correlative" obliga-
tions here; but the candidates are implausible. The Constitutional
right of free speech is independent of, for example, the obligation
not to assault that was breached by those who silenced Alvin. Nor
does it correlate with obligations incumbent on Congress. There
may be some point in speaking of a Congressional "obligation"
not to (try to) exceed one's legislative powers or, more specifically,
not to restrict speech guaranteed free by the First Amendment. But
this "obligation" would be a queer one, for the members of Congress
are not subject to civil or criminal action against them if they
"breach" it by enacting unconstitutional laws. If they do this their
actions could be described as "illegal" or "unlawfurl only in the
sense of "invalid": it is not that they would break the law in so act-
ing, but rather that they would fail to make valid and binding
law.

D On "immunities," "disabilities" and "powers," see Hobfeld, op. cit., or

the helpful summary in Salmond on Jurisprudence, ch. 10.

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 52 OCS

"Immunities" are probably not thought of by philosophers who

proclaim the general correlativity of rights and duties. But that
slogan is presumably applied to Alvin's right to address the crowd,
to which we now return.
The men assaulting Alvin acted unlawfully and may be said
to have breached a legal obligation. They might have done the
same in other ways; by threatening, coercing, forcibly restraining
or abducting him, for example. These are at least the usual ways
of interfering with the exercise of someone's rights, and conse-
quently the prohibitions upon such forms of behavior (either in law
or morals) might be thought to constitute an aggregate "obligation
not to interfere" which correlates with Alvin's right. But this is not
plausible, since others' having these obligations does not entail that
Alvin has any particular right to do anything. If so, they cannot
correlate with Alvin's right according to the pattern discerned
before. I shall explain.
It sometimes seems to be assumed that Alvin is not protected
by prohibitions on our behavior unless he has a right to do what
he is doing, which makes it seem as if Alvin's right (when he has
one) and the prohibitions are more closely connected than they
actually are. But this assumption is false. Most of the things that
we are prohibited from doing to or with respect to Alvin when he
is acting within his rights we are also prohibited (by law and
morals) from doing when he has no right to act as he does. If
Alvin's soap box talk had been illegal and he had acted without a
legal right, those who assaulted him would still have acted illegally
themselves. Similarly, if it could be shown that Alvin had no moral
right to make that speech it would not follow that we would have
been morally entitled to interfere. I have no right to kill Alvin in
order to prevent his stealing candy from a baby; I have no right
to gag him to prevent his lying; I have no right to torture him to
dissuade him from breaking a promise. This is not to say that Alvin's
acting outside his rights has no bearing on the way we may treat
him-only that it does not entitle us to treat him as we please. In
some cases we are allowed to interfere; in order to defend our-
selves, for example; but these seem to be special exceptions to
the ordinary sweeping prohibitions against killing and asisault. In
other words, from the fact that others: are prohibited from acting in
ways that constitute interference with A's doing X it does not
follow that A has a right to do X. So the ordinary legal and moral
prohibitions which serve to protect someone in the exercise of his

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THE CORRELATIVITY OF RIGHTS AND DUTEES 53

rights do not logically correlate with those rights since others are,
in general, under such obligations even when one does not have a
right to act as he does.
Before considering some rebuttals, we should deal with the
possible inference in the other direction-from "active" rights to
protecting obligations-for this alleged entailment is all that is
sometimes meant by the equivocal term "correlativity." It must be
borne in mind, however, that if the inference works in this direction
alone, there is a significant disanalogy between such "active" rights
and Alvin's right to be paid.
From the fact that Alvin has a right to do X does it follow
that others are prohibited (in law or morals) from interfering with
his doing X? It should be obvious now why one may be tempted
to say yes-and also why at least some of the grounds for saying
yes are insufficient. Since others are prohibited in general from
(e.g.) assaulting, threatening, coercing and forcibly restraining
Alvin, they are prohibited from doing such things when they con-
stitute interference with the exercise of his rights. And thus counter-
examples to the alleged entailment between such "active" rights
and these "obligations not to interfere" will be impossible. It may
seem as if these obligations follow from, are "part" of or "correlate"
with Alvin's right. But once we see that these obligations apply
generally, whether or not Alvin acts within his rights, and that this
is what makes it seem as if they follow from Alvin's right, we should
no longer be tempted to say that they do follow.
Let this be granted. I shall consider two ways in which a
partisan of general correlativity might try to save that doctrine.
He might claim that, besides the ordinary obligations mentioned,
there are also extraordinary or special obligations that strictly
correlate with "active" rights. For the ways in which one might
interfere with Alvin's speaking are not, perhaps, exhausted by the
class of things the ordinary prohibitions cover; and some of this
surplus might be prohibited as well. Certain forms of verbal abuse
might be prohibited when used against a public speaker, for
example, but not otherwise. If so, the obligation imposed would
correlate with Alvin's right to speak publicly.
But this is not a promising line of defense, for it is a con-
tingent matter in the law, at least, whether any such special obliga-
tions are imposed; and so the existence of such obligations would
not be implied by (though they would imply) the right to speak
publicly. One might deny this if he were willing to say something

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 54 NOUS

like (a) that any relevant change in the law (however minor)
changes the sense of the statement that Alvin "has a right to speak
publicly," or (b) that any such change destroys one right and
creates another in its place, though the two would be described
identically. But I see no reason to construe the case in such a way
except to defend at all costs a general doctrine of correlativity.
Furthermore, unless we suppose that the analysis of moral and legal
rights diverges at this point, any such special obligations in morals
are not implied by moral "active" rights either.
Another line of defense is given by the claim that there is a
general obligation not to interfere with another person, an obliga-
tion not exhausted by the ordinary prohibitions. For one is rarely
justified (in morals at least) in interfering with another's doing what
he has a right to do. But this suggestion too is covered by our
previous remarks. On the one hand, the existence of a general legal
obligation not to interfere is a contingent matter (it may protect
some forms of behavior and not others). And on the other hand,
I think it also true that one is rarely justified on moral grounds in
interfering with another whether or not he has a right to do what he
is doing-unless one is defending oneself or preventing substantial
hann to others.

III
Am I claiming, then, that it is not generally true that rights
"correlate" with duties or obligations-even in the minimal sense
of implying them? Well, yes and no. Our Constitutional right of
free speech does not correlate with duties in anything like the way
that Alvin's right correlates with Bernard's obligation. But given
certain assumptions there may be ways of deriving statements about
some obligation or other from the assertion of such a right. It
would be most misleading, however, to call the implication a case
of "correlativity" if that term is also used to characterize the very
tight, determinate relations between rights and duties exemplified
by our first example. I am not even prepared to grant that run-of-
the-mill "active" rights directly imply specific obligations not to
interfere. It seems correct and natural to say, for example, that
a motorist has a right to make a right, turn on a red light in
California which he does not have in New York State, in virtue of
the differences between the traffic laws of those two states, whereby
making a right turn on a red light is prohibited unless explicitly

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 ITHE CORRELATIVITY OF RIGHTS AND DUTIES 55

authorized in New York, whereas it is permitted, and indeed re-

quired when traffic allows, in California. This example may help
debunk several dogmas about rights.
First, what implications does the assertion of this right have
about others' obligations? The right does not impose on other
motorists an obligation to stay out of one's lane, for example; if
there is such an obligation (e.g., not to block traffic) its existence
seems independent. It seems more plausible to say that this right
imposes obligations on law-enforcement officials not to interfere
with one's making a right turn (when allowed by the conditions
of the right). But we know that a policeman may stop a car for
various reasons even though the driver is not violating any regu-
lations; so what sort of interference is excluded by this right? and
by whom specifically? A policeman may admittedly be under an
obligation not to stop or disturb a private citizen without cause-
but can we say that that obligation is "correlative" with my right
to make a right turn on a red light in California?
Second, some might maintain that rights imply "correlative"
duties because the point of claiming or asserting a right often is to
deter, discourage, prevent, protest or stop unwarranted interference.
But there are other ways of accounting for this phenomenon. More-
over, assertions about rights can have other points. Our traffic law
example could be used to remind, contrast or instruct, and would
not likely be used to protest unwarranted interference.
Last, it is generally supposed that an "active" right essentially
involves an element of choice in the sense that one cannot have a
right to do something without having the right to refrain. But
this assumption seems falsified by our example. Choice is ruled out,
as it often is, because the behavior is not only allowed but required.
Ours is not an isolated example: one can think of many possible
cases. It seems no contradiction to imagine, say, that one has the
right to vote but is also required by law to vote. It may sometimes
be (for various reasons) misleading to speak of a right to do
something when one also has an obligation to do it; but even if
misleading it can be true; and, indeed, when challenged one can
sometimes support one's claim of a right to do something by show-
ing that one has a positive obligation to do it.10

10 Earlier versions of this paper were read at Stanford, Cornell, Michigan,

and Rutgers universities, where I received many helpful comments and sug-
gestions.

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