How, then, are moral rights themselves to be understood, at the level of conceptual analysis,one that prescinds as much as reasonably possible from controversies that divide theproponents of different theories of rights, preserving the sense that for all their disputes theyare engaged with the self-same subject-matter? I think we can say that the following features
are characteristic of moral rights. First, they have corresponding moral duties, so that A’sright to X involves a duty on someone else not to interfere with A’s enjoying X or to protect
or promote his access to X.
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Second, the possession of the right typically secures to its holder
something of benefit to them, e.g. freedom from attack or the ability to sell one’s property.
Third, moral rights that do not owe their existence to the law or some social practice aregenerally thought of as grounded in some quality of the right-holder. There is extensivephilosophical disagreement about the nature of this quality: whether it is the right-
holder’s
needs or interests, their capacity for autonomous choice, their membership of the moralcommunity, or their likeness to God. Fourth, the obligations associated with moral rights have
a ‘directed’ character: violations of them are not merely moral wrongs, but involve the
wronging
or
victimization
of the specific individual in whose right the obligation originates.Finally, the duties corresponding to rights are in principle properly enforceable against theirbearers, whether by law or informal social sanctions. This last condition is sometimespresented as characterizing not rights in general but, as in Grotius and Locke, the sub-class of rights that constitutes the domain of justice in the strict sense.