This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

Philosophy bites is available at www

philosophy bites.

I have a legal right to introduce philosophy bites. Nobody has the right to prevent me from doing so.

But what is the definition of a legal right?

What are legal rights founded on? To whom should they be extended? And for what reason?

With the answers, here's Matthew Kramer, Professor of Legal and Political Philosophy at Cambridge University.

Matthew Kramer, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thank you very much.

Well the topic we're going to focus on today is the concept of a legal right.

What is a legal right? Well that seemingly simple question turns out to be

very complicated. Probably the greatest contribution to clarifying our

understanding of the nature of legal rights was made by an American legal

philosopher in the early 20th century, Wesley Hoefeld, who though he died in his late 30s near the end of the First World War

managed to come up with an analytical framework that is still very widely used today.

So what was his framework? He distinguished rights from a number of other

types of entitlements or legal or moral positions. Right according to his

understanding was a position of protectedness, being protected against

the interference or uncooperativeness or some other undesirable intervention on the part of someone else.

And that was distinguished by him from certain other types of entitlements such as

liberties, for example, to be legally or morally at liberty is not to be under a duty to refrain from

acting in a certain way.

...