“The [U.N.] Declaration [of Human Rights] defines rights poorly, and says almost nothing about the corresponding duties.  No inspection of the Universal Declaration, or of later inspection of the Universal Declaration, or of later Un or European documents, shows who is required to do what for whom, or why they are required to do it.  The underlying difficulty of any declaration of rights is that it assumes a passive view of human life and of citizenship.  Rights answer the question ‘What are my entitlements?’ or ‘What should I get?’  They don’t answer the active citizen’s question ‘What should I do?’”

“A supposed right to a fair trial is mere rhetoric unless others – all relevant others – have duties to ensure such trials: unless judges have duties to give fair decisions, unless police witnesses have duties to testify, and to testify honestly, and so on for all involved in a legal process.  Duties are the business end of justice: they formulate the requirements towards which declarations of rights gesture; they speak to all of us whose action is vital for real, respected rights.”

Why all the attention on rights, not duties?

 “Declarations of rights ostensibly offer something to everybody, without coming clean about the costs and demands of respecting the rights they proclaim.  Governments have generally been willing to sign up to declarations of rights, indeed to ratify them, but less keen to meet the counterpart duties.  Individuals have often been willing, even eager, to claim right, but less willing to meet their duties to respect others’ rights.  In thinking about rights we readily see ourselves on the receiving end – and it is always someone else’s round.”
 

Both a Moral and Political Dimension.
Examples:

1. UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Assigns duties to states.  But “ignores the reality that some states are not committed to rights and that others are too weak to secure them.”

2.  If you believe in a right to health care, what is the extent of your duty to provide it?  What treatments do you personally (as a member of society) have a duty to provide?

3.  Right to low-cost university education?  Duty of each tax-payer to subsidize it?  Duty of students to get the most out of that education? (Do you think of homework as a duty, as something you owe back to society?)

4.  Ignatieff “We should beware of the ways in which rights talk can swallow up the whole of our language of what is good in private and public life.  And we should realize that protecting the rights of individuals within a family isn’t enough to keep our family life healthy.  Never before have individuals had so many rights within family life.  Never have divorce rates been higher.”

 
Which Duties?
--> Bridge to Kant

Duties (or obligations) are prior to rights

Starting premise:
We are all moral equals.

Rather than deriving:
Therefore, we all have equal rights.

Kant derives the deeper implication:
 Therefore, we all have equal duties.

“The basic principles of justice – like all ethical principles – are principles for all.  We should not act on principles that are unfit to be principles for all.”