ABSTRACT
In his Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, Thomas Hill Green characterizes a right as 'a power claimed and recognized as contributory to a common good'. Scholars such as Rex Martin have noted that Green's characterization of a right has multiple elements: it includes social recognition and the common good, as well as the idea of a power. This chapter analyses the rights recognition claim and, more generally, the concept of a claim right. It introduces the idea of moral internalism, and sketches some general considerations in its favour. The chapter analyses the relation of rights to the common good, i.e. claim (hi) above. It then argues that, although an analysis of Green's moral internalism provides the basis for an interesting rights recognition thesis, it does not quite justify Green's strong requirement that actual social recognition is necessary for a right to be properly ascribed to a person.
