The Value of Claim-Rights
28 March 2025 (Friday), 12:00-1:00 PM
Room 824, 8/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
It is often considered to be of importance to determine whether a legal duty correlates with a claim-right. At the same time, philosophers of (private) law have tended to accept that possession of a claim-right does not necessarily entail (i) standing to hold a person accountable for breach of the duty, (ii) the enforceability of the duty, (iii) the ability of the claim-right to guide the duty-bearer’s conduct or deliberations, (iv) the power to waive the duty. This generates a puzzle: if having a claim-right doesn’t necessarily have any of these normative upshots, why does it matter whether a person has a claim-right? In this talk, I consider possible answers to this puzzle.
About the Speaker
Sandy Steel is currently Visiting Research Professor at HKU. He is Professor of Law and Philosophy of Law at the University of Oxford, Dr Lee Shau Kee’s Sir Man Kam Lo Fellow in Law at Wadham College, and Global Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School (London). He was awarded a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust in 2024. His most recent book is Omissions in Tort Law (OUP, 2024).
Chair: Professor Scott Veitch, Paul KC Chung Professor in Jurisprudence, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong
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