Rowan Cruft is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Stirling. His work focuses on the nature and moral foundation of rights and duties. He is the co-editor of Crime, Punishment, and Responsibility (OUP, 2011) and of Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights (OUP, 2015). His research examines the nature and justification of rights and duties, and their role in shaping a democratic public sphere.

• Preface


• 1: Introduction


• Part I: Rights as Addressive Duties


• 2: Rights' Elusive Relation to Interests


• 3: Rights' Elusive Relation to Powers


• 4: Rights' Relation to the First and Second Person


• 5: Rights and Interests Revisited


• 6: From Directed Duties to Rights


• Part II: Human Rights for the Right-Holder's Sake


• 7: Teleological Groundings of Rights and Duties


• 8: The Individual's Place in the Grounding of her Rights


• 9: The 'Human' in Human Rights and the Law


• 10: Human Rights as Everyone's Business


• Part III: Property Rights for the Common Good


• 11: Introducing Property Rights


• 12: Modest Property Rights for the Right-Holder's Sake


• 13: Property Rights for the Common Good


• 14: Rights Protecting Performance of Duties


• 15: Conclusion: A Partial Vindication of Rights

Rowan Cruft develops an original theory of rights that partially vindicates this concept's central place in modern moral, political and legal thinking. He defends human rights law as institutionalising pre-legal moral rights, and he calls into question property as an individual right.