Social Rights and Deontological Constraints

Abstract

Assuming that there is not terminological or conceptual impediment to call social and economic rights “human rights”, this paper argues that social and economic human rights are normatively different from classical civil and political human rights, and that this may have some significant institutional implications. Following mainstream opinion, I presuppose that both classical liberal rights and socioeconomic human rights are bundles of negative and positive “incidents” (concrete rights). My first claim is that in both cases negative incidents can plausibly be constructed as “deontological constraints.” That means that such constraints must be observed even if infringing them could maximize the satisfaction of the interests those rights seek to preserve. My second claim is that, contrary to classical human rights, the fulfillment of the negative incidents of socioeconomic rights, albeit necessary, does not represent a significant contribution to their fulfillment. Since in the case of socioeconomic human rights positive incidents play such crucial role, there is a relevant asymmetry between classical and socioeconomic human rights. The paper concludes by showing some institutional implications of this asymmetry.