The disvalue of rights

Abstract:: Rights are good for their holders, and duties are bad for their holders. While duties restrict their holders’ freedom, rights enhance it. This is the gist of the value assumption defended by the Standard Picture of Rights. The fact that grounds this endorsement is that rights are normative protective objects. They function as shields or enhancers of their holders’ autonomy and status. Thus, right-holding is seen either as necessarily of holder-relative, non-instrumental value, or as it cannot be of holder-relative, non-instrumental disvalue. Contrary to this, the thesis suggests that legal and moral rights can be non-instrumentally disvaluable for their holders. If true, the Standard Picture is wrong about the value of rights and right-holding. The thesis considers three examples of rights that holding them entails a holder-relative, non-instrumental disvalue. Two are legal rights: the Legal Right to Die and the Criminal Defendant’s Legal Right to Lie. The third one is a moral right, the Children’s Moral Right to Be Loved. Each of these examples reflects one of three ways rights can be disvaluable. These classes of disvaluable rights are, respectively, Distorting Rights, Disabling Rights, and Self-Defeating Rights. The examples serve two aims: (i) to argue that in those particular cases, there is good reason to eliminate or waive one’s right, and (ii) to offer a further reason to believe that the Standard Picture errs regarding the value of rights.