Genealogies of Rights

Norberto Bobbio identified different versions of subjective rights. These pages contain a philosophical and historical investigation on the origin and the essential and distinctive traces of the classical-Christian and the liberal versions. Concretely, the book examines Michel Villey's theses and Brian Tierny's critique. It concludes that, although right was used in subjective sense before William of Ockham's time, it was Ockham who, in his controversy with pope John XXII, for the first time used this term with a nominalist meaning. Against this version of subjective rights Francisco de Vitoria proposed an alternative in continuity with the classical tradition. The two versions have existed side by side since then and compete in providing its meaning to the political order of the West. The contrast between the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, on the one hand, and the United States' Constitution, on the other, exemplify this rivalry.