Dear David B.,
Thanks for your 16/6 12:45 -0600 explanation of the difference between
rights as a legal principle and as a code of behavior and for your reply to
the rest of my 12/6 0:02 +0200 posting. As far as I am concerned, you could
have been a tad more concise...
If 'the difference between violating a person's rights in the legal sense
and interfering with someone's rights in a behavioral sense is the
difference between committing a crime and being rude', than it seems to me
to be a matter of degree only. In Dutch practice, where judges and not
juries decide on where the one ends and the other begins, judges disagree on
that (some judges tolerate a bit more as 'just' being rude than others) and
their average judgements change in the course of time (things considered
criminal in the 50ties are tolerated now, without the law having changed).
Being biased against 'trial by jury', I don't think American practice will
be better than Dutch practice in that respect.
Recently a man was arrested and convicted for insulting the Dutch crown
prince and his wife at their wedding by throwing white paint against their
carriage. He claimed to express some opinion (not necessarily insulting to
the royal couple), but the judge considered that his freedom of speech (i.e.
of public expression of opinions) should weigh less than the right of the
royal couple not to be insulted.
You wrote:
'Properly defined rights have boundaries so as to exclude the possiblity
that one person's rights DO NOT extend into another's.'
Does that imply that according to you Dutch law does not properly define the
right of freedom of speech and the right of the royal family (as a symbol of
Dutch unity) not to be insulted?
I'm not so sure if 'just' in 'just claims' (as a definition of 'rights')
always refers to 'legal justice' or 'just according to the law'. Doesn't
that narrow down the meaning of 'rights' too much? Is the law always the
frontier of our evolving sense/experience of justice?
But I will accept your definition of 'rights' as 'legally just claims' for
the moment.
You go on to write:
'rights can at least moderate inequality in a society because they are, by
definition, extended to every individual univerally and without regard for
religion, creed, class, race, gender or any other irrelevant aspect of those
individuals.'
Are you still referring to the same definition? In that case you suppose a
legal system (a set of laws) that includes and consequently applies this
non-discrimination principle. I agree on the desirability of such a
situation, but I am not sure if the Dutch and American legal systems are
really free of discriminatory aspects.
I accept your explanation why I don't need to go to court to exercise
'legally just claims' and I am glad that you agree that the 'right to be
able to influence social patterns of values' is a useful interpretation of
the 'right to freedom'.
I agree that a right to freedom in this sense implies an obligation to try
to change society in order to limit cruelty and injustice. I wrote something
similar to Roger 4/4 23:00 +0200:
'Shouldn't a right to "freedom" imply the right to equal ability to
influence reality for others that share that same
reality? Shouldn't my claim to freedom, to a specific ability to influence
reality, be at the same time a duty to grant others that same right to
freedom, the same ability to influence that reality to the extent that we
share it?'
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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