Rights and economic justice in Nozick’s theory

Abstract

In his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) Robert Nozick developed a well-known theory of natural rights understood as side constraints. In a situation in which there was no government (a state of nature, so to speak), individuals would have to protect their fundamental rights on their own, typically by utilizing mutual-protection associations. These ideas, side constraints and protection agencies, are discussed in Sect. 7.2. In the course of his argument Nozick introduces a second kind of natural right-the procedural right (the right to protect or enforce one’s basic natural rights on one’s own). But such rights are very different from the side-constraint protected natural rights that Nozick had discussed initially. Procedural rights are discussed in Sect. 7.3. As regards the protection of rights Nozick claims that no state more extensive than the minimal state can be justified. His argument for this claim proceeds in two stages. The first stage involves just transfers between individual persons; at some point, second, such transfers presuppose the just acquisition (the appropriation) of something previously unowned. Nozick’s defense of the minimal state and his account of the two key ideas, just transfer and just acquisition of holdings, involved in that defense are taken up in Sect. 7.4. The chapter then develops (in Sect. 7.5) four main criticisms of Nozick’s theory. A short conclusion to the chapter follows in Sect. 7.6.