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There can also be conflicts between rights. In some cases it seems
that violating or limiting one right can lead to fewer violations
of others. Should we have a 7:00pm curfew for everyone in order
to reduce crime?
There are many interesting questions about moral
rights. Are they acquired gradually or all at once? If gradually,
when does one acquire 'full' moral rights? This issue has practical
importance. Is it permissible, for example, to have a curfew for
teenagers but not for adults? Or, assuming that abortion is morally
permissible for adults, should it also be available for a 14 year
old girl?
A right is said to be "absolute" if we ought to respect
it under all possible circumstances. If there are circumstances
(likely or unlikely) under which we ought to violate or override
a right (or at least circumstances in which we would be justified in violating or overriding a right), then we should not call it "absolute." Sometimes
philosophers refer to such rights as "prima facie."
These rights can be justly abridged or overridden for the sake
of other important moral concerns. Whether people have any absolute
rights is a question that philosophers continue to debate. It
is generally agreed, however, that if a right is violated for
a good reason, the person having the right may be owed some compensation.
Do you think that people have any absolute rights?
How would you settle these cases of conflict between different
individual rights, or between individual rights and the welfare
of some larger group?
- Outlawing pornography to reduce the number of rapes by 2%
- Forbidding persons with certain inheritable diseases to have
children
- Killing an innocent person to keep a madman from murdering thousands
- Confining persons with deadly contagious diseases
- Sacrificing a small number of civilians in war to achieve
victory
- Trespassing on valuable private property to take a dying child
to a hospital
- Limiting property rights to prevent hardship among a minority
group
The relationship between utility and rights becomes more complex
when we look at the views of different philosophers. Many utilitarians
speak of rights founded on utility. In such a theory, rights are
justified by their LONG-term utility. But there may still be conflicts
between rights and SHORT-term utility. There may also be conflicts
between the utility of a particular act and the utility of a type
of act to which it belongs. (Should we let a proven murderer go
free because his right to speak with his lawyer was violated?)
On the other hand, some philosophers who make rights fundamental
are willing to grant that rights may be abridged or overridden
to avoid catastrophic consequences for human welfare. Judith Thomson
asks us to consider whether someone ought to drive across private
property in order to save the life of a sick child? If we answer
"yes," it means not only that the property right in
question is not absolute, but that it may be justly abridged in
order to avoid a human tragedy. A case like this leads us to ask
for a principle indicating when a right ought to be abridged.