Votes as Powers
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Description
Carl Wellman's contribution to our understanding of rights is four-fold. First, he insisted on the analytic importance of Wesley N. Hohfeld's taxonomy of legal advantages. Second, he showed how there could be moral equivalents of Hohfeld's legal positions, thus opening the way to a detailed philosophical analysis of moral as weIl as legal rights. Third, he developed a useful 'atomic' model in which each right was conceived to consist of a core Hohfeldian position associated with other Hohfeldian elements in a way that secured the right-bearer's dominion over the core. And fourth, he argued that although there are important connections between rights and dominion and between rights, choice, and agency, it does not follow that the Hohfeldian element at the core of every right is a liberty or privilege. The core position may be a power, a claim, even a liability, and the core's full significance for liberty may not reveal itself until one considers how all the complex elements of the right operate together. WeIlman has used this apparatus to cast helpful light on a number of rights, including free speech, abortion rights, economic rights, and the right to refuse medical treatment. One category about which he has said relatively little is the category of political rights, particularly the right to vote. There are various remarks on this topic scattered throughout Wellman's writings; but there is nothing in the way of a systematic account. I am going to take this opportunity to develop an analysis of voting rights along the general analytic lines that Wellman suggests, because I firmly believe that this is an area where his Hohfeldian approach can yield considerable insight.
Source Publication
Rights and Reason: Essays in Honor of Carl Wellman
Source Editors/Authors
Marilyn Friedman, Larry May, Kate Parsons, Jennifer Stiff
Publication Date
2000
Recommended Citation
Waldron, Jeremy, "Votes as Powers" (2000). Faculty Chapters. 1630.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1630
