Abstract

Our current debates over social issues are saturated with the language of rights. In order to advance their position, proponents of a particular policy will appeal to certain rights--moral rights--which they claim ought to be legally recognized. Opponents will do likewise. The result is that such appeals no longer yield a relative advantage, but instead yield rhetorical noise. ;While it may be suggested that "rights talk" therefore ought to be jettisoned in favor of other modes of moral discourse, it remains the case that rights can be a useful way of capturing rather complex moral content; more strongly, the language of rights should be retained, but utilized with a great deal more care than has been the case in recent times. ;In order to arrive at this conclusion, I apply two leading theories of rights-justification to each of four social issues which currently suffer the affliction described above: abortion, affirmative action, welfare and redistributive taxation, and pornography and freedom of expression. The assumption is that rights themselves cannot be the foundational elements of morality; rather, when the question is raised why a right exists, it can be answered via reference to other, more fundamental moral principles. The failure to pay careful attention to the justification of rights, in terms of these other principles, is the cause of our current unfortunate predicament. ;Nonetheless, the application of the two theories to the four issues considered herein suggests that the normative implications of the theories converge in each case. In other words, the morally appropriate social policy does not vary according to the justification of rights. For this reason, it makes sense to retain the language of rights for its instrumental value