ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the possibility of conceiving obligations independently of rights. engages with the thoughts introduced. It expounds Hohfeld's analyses of legal correlatives for purposes of clarifying the way in which duties relate to rights in standard Hohfeldian rights discourses. It puts forward a constitutional law argument to show how the scope of rights discourses might be expanded in order to broaden the spectrum of recognised legal duties in any given society. The chapter concludes with the sober observation that this expansion of rights discourses is the only way in which standard legal argument can pursue an expansion of duty discourses. It turns to a reading of Mauss' essay of the gift to determine whether one might at least plausibly contemplate the 'priority of obligation ahead of right' from the vantage point of a broader normative or philosophical discourse about duties.
