The Availability of Law Redux: The Correlation of Rights and Duties

Abstract

Insofar as the human individual is social in nature, to each per- son’s duty there corresponds another’s right. Perhaps even more profound is the view that there are only rights in the first instance, that every individual has claims—those of human beings in general and those arising from their special situations—which as such become duties for the other. But since everyone who is thus entitled is also somehow obligated, a network of rights and duties back and forth arises in which it is the right that is the primary, leading factor; duty is admittedly only its unavoidable correlate situated in the same activity