The Distribution of Rights in Society
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Description
In the few years since the publication of Sen's paper on 'The Impossibility of a "Paretian Liberal"', (1970) a remarkable outpouring of notes and papers has been circulated and published on the topic. Two recent papers, one by Gibbard (1974) and the other by Blau (1975), have addressed the issue raised by Sen in especially interesting and provocative ways. I think their proposals are not completely satisfactory in certain respects and so I venture here to propose a somewhat different way of attacking the problem. The resolutions that I propose to Sens' 'paradox' have their own deficiencies of course and one is left, ultimately, to judge which deficiencies are the least incapacitating. Like Blau and Gibbard I propose to weaken, in a certain sense, the notion of a right sufficiently to allow society to distribute rights to many individuals in a way that is consistent with the Pareto principle. Several such notions of right are found and I argue that our intuitions about rights in applied situations do not necessarily support the alternative notions of Blau and Gibbard.
Source Publication
Decision Theory and Social Ethics: Issues in Social Choice
Source Editors/Authors
Hans W. Gottinger, Werner Leinfellner
Publication Date
1978
Recommended Citation
Ferejohn, John A., "The Distribution of Rights in Society" (1978). Faculty Chapters. 500.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/500
