Rights and duties: meaning, theories, elements and the kinds of legal rights
LUG-102 Jurisprudence — Legal Method, Indian Legal System and Basic Theory of Law, Unit IV: Rights and duties: theories and classification. · LLB · 60 min
Opens Unit IV with the two basic concepts of analytical jurisprudence: what a legal right is (Austin, Holland, Salmond, Gray, Ihering, Pollock), the will and interest theories, Salmond's five elements, every classification of rights the examiners ask for (perfect and imperfect, positive and negative, in rem and in personam, proprietary and personal, in re propria and in re aliena, principal and accessory, legal and equitable, vested and contingent, primary and sanctioning, public and private), the kinds of duties and the debate on whether rights and duties are always correlative. Indian examples come from Part III and Article 51A. This topic has been asked in every paper since 2018-19, so the tables here are meant to be reproduced in the exam.
Objectives
- Define a legal right in the words of Salmond, Austin, Holland, Ihering and Gray and distinguish it from a moral right.
- Explain the will theory and the interest theory of rights and the synthesis adopted by Salmond and Allen.
- Apply Salmond's five elements of a legal right to a simple transaction.
- Classify a given right under each of Salmond's heads, with an Indian illustration for each kind.
- Explain the kinds of duties and argue both sides of the question whether every duty has a correlative right.
Slides
- What is a right? From the ordinary word to the legal concept
- Will theory v interest theory, and the synthesis
- Salmond's five elements of a legal right
- Kinds of rights I: perfect and imperfect, positive and negative, in rem and in personam
- Kinds of rights II: proprietary and personal, in re propria and in re aliena, principal and accessory, legal and equitable
- Kinds of rights III: vested and contingent, primary and sanctioning, public and private, and the full table
- Duties: meaning and kinds
- Are rights and duties always correlative?
- Rights and duties in Indian law: Part III, Part IV and Article 51A
- Writing the answer: structure and a checklist
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