Rights, Goods, and Proportionate War

Security and Rights: Incompatible Goods?

This article suggests that in the origins of modern state, there is a paradox: the state concentrates the use of violence and, in this way, it is the main source of violence; but at the same time, attempts to delete it. To solve this paradox is the main challenge of the democratic state. If modern state provides security without rights, it would lose legitimacy, its moral advantage. At internat...

For the greater goods? Ownership rights and utilitarian moral judgment.

People often judge it unacceptable to directly harm a person, even when this is necessary to produce an overall positive outcome, such as saving five other lives. We demonstrate that similar judgments arise when people consider damage to owned objects. In two experiments, participants considered dilemmas where saving five inanimate objects required destroying one. Participants judged this unacc...

The War on Terrorism and the End of Human Rights

New Forms of Private Property: Property Rights in Environmental Goods

This entry examines the relationship between property rights and environmental protection. According to the ‘tragedy of the commons’ model, environmental pollution and resource depletion result from the inadequate specification of property rights in environmental goods. Two solutions typically are offered for averting the ‘tragedy’: (1) specify property rights (that is, privatize the commons) o...

A bill of rights, or a bill of goods?

In response to the rise in construction defect litigation and the resulting increase in the cost of insurance contractors are required to carry, the Washington Legislature passed RCW 64.50.005 et seq., which became effective June 13, 2002. The statute (referred to by some as a “bill of rights” for contractors) requires that homeowners and condominium homeowners’ associations (collectively “home...