Social Rights and Deontological Constraints

EDUARDO RIVERA LÓPEZ

Law, Ethics and Philosophy

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Lugar: Barcelona; Año: 2018 vol. 6 p. 76 - 91

Assuming that there is not terminological or conceptual impediment to call social and economic rights ?human rights?, the purpose of this paper is to claim that social and economic human rights are normatively different from classical civil and political human rights, and that this may have some institutional implications. Following mainstream opinion, I assume that both classical and social rights are bundles of negative and positive ?incidents? (concrete rights). My first claim is that negative incidents of both classical and social rights can plausibly be considered ?deontological constraints.? That means that they must be observed, even if it is true that violating them will prevent more violations of the same right. My second claim is that the fulfillment of the negative incidents of the classical right to X is a substantial contribution to the fulfillment of the classical right to X. This is not the case with social rights: the fulfillment of negative incidents of the social right to Y, albeit necessary, does not represent a real or significant contribution to the fulfillment of the social right to Y. Only positive incidents are morally significant. My conclusion is that significant parts of classical human rights are normatively different from significant parts of social human rights. Finally, I show some institutional implications of this asymmetry.