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The libertarian theory of rights, unlike the utilitarian theory, has no difficulty in accounting for the fact that when a right-holder's right is violated it is he and not people generally who is wronged. By specifying that the wronging criterion must allude in some way to interference with the wronged person's liberty, the conceptual link between wronging and ignoring or tampering with a vital need, capacity, or interest of the wronged person is maintained.
But the wronging criterion that results from this stress on the right-holder's liberty yields a theory of rights as rigid side constraints. An implication is that it is a theory of negative rights and cannot accommodate the idea that among the rights people have are positive, or what are sometimes called recipience, rights. That is, it is a theory that grounds people's rights to do various things, in case they are capable of doing them and have the means for doing them. But it recognizes no right to have a capacity for doing anything or to have the means for doing it.
Because the libertarian theory of rights cannot accommodate the idea of positive rights, it seems excessively formal and insensitive to inequities in the distribution of capacities and means. Thus, the libertarian theory identifies a ground for protecting the property of those who have property, but no ground for ensuring that the impoverished shall be nourished. It cannot construe the right to life as a right to the means for sustaining life.
A result of these two complementary features of the utilitarian and libertarian theories of rights is that where the utilitarian theory seems well attuned to the welfare needs of people but insensitive to their uniqueness, the libertarian theory captures this fact of uniqueness but is Scroogelike in its response to their welfare and to inequities in the distribution of the means to well-being.
The autonomist theory of rights agrees with the libertarian theory in focusing the wronging criterion on a vital need, capacity, or interest of the right-holder. But, taking account of the considerations advanced in chapters 7-9, where reasons are offered for regarding a person's interest in autonomy as the basis for his interest in liberty (and for regarding the right to liberty as compelling only because acknowledging it furthers his interest in autonomy), the autonomist founds the wronging criterion on the right-holder's capacity for and interest in autonomy. The general idea is that a person is wronged by ignoring or tampering with his capacity for autonomy, either by preventing or failing to nurture development of that capacity or by preventing or failing to provide opportunities for living in a way that expresses the capacity....
Autonomy-based rights are those modes of treatment to which the individual is entitled in order that his life and situation may have three characteristics: his domain for autonomy should be open; it should be open de facto, and not merely de jure; and he should have both the ability and the opportunity actually to live autonomously within his domain for autonomy.
The distinction between positive and negative rights is basic to elaboration of the autonomist theory of rights. What one has a right to is a mode of treatment. The right-holder may at his discretion require that mode of treatment from those bound to him by the right. Some modes of treatment consist in noninterference with what one does, is, or has. One who has authority to demand such noninterference has a negative right....
Other modes of treatment consist in actually being given things or the means of doing or becoming something. In case one has authority to require of others (those bound by the right) that they treat one in such a way (by actually giving one something, or by providing one with the means of doing or becoming something), one has a positive right to that mode of treatment. [Lawrence Howarth, Autonomy, 211-214.]