ABSTRACT
HOHFELD’S ANALYSIS OF RIGHTS The question of what constitutes a right is a problematic one, since the word ‘right’ itself may mean a number of different things in different contexts, be they moral, political, economic or legal. The vocabulary of propositions and arguments about rights makes it difficult in many cases to distinguish between the specific connotations of the term, and this tends to obscure the meaning and value of rights as basic building blocks of law, as well as essential elements of the idea of justice. Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld (1879-1918), an American jurist, introduced theoretical elements in analytic thought in his analysis of rights – which he called ‘the lowest common denominators of the law’ – in several articles published posthumously in Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning (1919).
