ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about conflicts of rights. It argues that if rights are understood along the lines of the Interest Theory proposed by Joseph Raz, then conflicts of rights must be regarded as more or less inevitable. The chapter also argues that rights on this conception should be thought of, not as correlative to single duties, but as generating a multiplicity of duties. It shows that this multiplicity stands in the way of any tidy or single-minded account of the way in which the resolution of rights conflicts should be approached. Many philosophers are reluctant to admit claims to the realm of rights if they seem likely to conflict with one another. One reason is that they are simply worried about the proliferation of rights claims. Rights and Trade-offs suggests that a theory of rights singles out certain interests whose promotion or protection is to be given qualitative precedence over the social calculus of interests generally.
