ABSTRACT
As we have seen, laws are made for the smooth running of society by enforcing social obligations with threat of punishment for noncompliance. Just because laws do require that obligations shall be fulfilled they help to preserve the rights of individual members of society. For the fact that, as members of a human society, we have duties and obligations towards our fellows entails that they have rights; also since others have duties and obligations towards us it follows that we too have rights. It is logically necessary that one who has duties confers rights on another or others. Duties are a necessary and sufficient condition for rights just as creditors are a necessary and sufficient condition for debtors. In chapter VIII I argued further than anyone who has a right must also have an obligation. This is not a logical entailment for it would be possible for a society to contain one individual who had rights (and to whom, therefore others had obligations) but who herself had no obligations to anyone. Such a person would be an autocrat, accountable to no one. However since we are concerned with moral rights, it is justifiable to take the view that no individual (with the exceptions granted in chapter VIII, note 6) can expect to have rights without also being prepared to accept obligations.
