Description and Objectives

In this course, we explore the historical development and the philosophical content of a concept that dominates modern political discourse: “rights.” What are rights? Where do they come from? What purpose do they serve? How do they relate to duties? Why do we talk about them so much?

We’ll approach these questions by the following path:

Unit 1: “Rights Talk”
Unit 2: Law, Justice, and Obligation Since Antiquity
Unit 3: The Natural Law Tradition
Unit 4: The Rationalistic Turn
Unit 5: The Challenge of Positivism
Unit 6: Modern Rights Claims

Textbooks

Mr. Grannis will select and provide primary and secondary source materials for each unit. The reading will be light in Unit 1 as we grapple with the logic and grammar of “rights-talk.” In Unit 2, we will examine a wide range of legal codes and other materials that show us the way other civilizations and societies have approached the very idea of law and its social functions. In Unit 3, we focus almost exclusively on the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas, with just a little of John Finnis at the end to show us a modern approach to natural law.

In Unit 4, we begin to see the emergence of natural rights as we conceive of them today. We read some secondary sources as well as Hobbes, Locke, Kant, and Burke. We also compare and contrast the versions of natural rights that emerged in Britain’s North American colonies in 1776, and in France in 1789. We confront the challenge of legal positivism in Unit 5, reading primary and secondary materials that cover the work of early positivists like Austin, later positivists like Kelsen and Hart, and the revitalization of natural law that occurred in the Nuremberg Trials and the later work of Lon Fuller. We will finish with more current readings that focus on particular controversies over particular rights.

Course Requirements

You should expect daily reading assignments of 2,000 to 4,000 words, daily (or at least frequent) low-stakes quizzes, and two or three unit tests per quarter. Your quarterly grades will be based on your performance on quizzes and tests, the quality of your class participation, and any extra-credit projects you complete. Quizzes will test your retrieval based on the readings, but most unit tests will be open-note, so take good notes. There will be a comprehensive final examination.

Successful Students

The successful student will come to class prepared, listen attentively to the lecture material, and participate constructively in class discussion. He will be acutely aware of his own fallibility, which will make him humble about his own opinions, moderate in his language, and eager to learn from others. He will be charitable in his presuppositions about others and his interpretations of what they say and do, and this will make him very slow to take offense. At the same time, he will love truth enough to be courageous about defending it even when he stands alone in his opinion. Needless to say, he will be courageous enough to listen at least as much as he speaks. Such a student will be successful not just in this course but throughout his happy life.

Additional Resources

If you need any help understanding the material after we have gone over it in class, please contact me right away so that we can get to the root of the misunderstanding and provide additional practice or instruction where appropriate.