Bentham, Rawls, & Sen on Law, Rights, & Justice: What’s Love Got to Do With It? -- Research Handbook on Law and Utilitarianism
Chapter
Overview
Overview
Abstract
We explore the aftermath of Bentham’s famously harsh criticism of extralegal rights: natural rights are ‘nonsense on stilts’. The chapter first discusses Rawls and Sen as Bentham’s rivals who defend theories of justice. It then shows that Sen fails to credit Bentham for correctly predicting proliferation of questionable rights and goes on to argue that Sen neglects Rawls’ Reflective Equilibrium. Following this, the chapter argues that Bentham’s attack on Sen’s proliferating extralegal rights is self-contradictory: Bentham proliferates utilitarian duties to include maximizing happiness for all sentient animals. It then explores Sen’s failures in attacking Bentham. Sen dodges fatal contradiction only at the costs of lacking a timetable and budget for reducing injustice, and having only a modest aim of reducing injustice by an unspecified amount. Bentham and Sen emerge from their battle seriously wounded-yet new versions of utilitarianism and rights live to fight another day. In conclusion, the chapter recommends less abstract, pre-set theorizing and more concrete, experimental action.
