  The position of many important writers on legal rights is difficult to ascertain on this point, because it is not one they addressed directly. Hohfeld (1919), for example, confined his discussion entirely to legal rights and never mentioned moral ones. Hart did write about moral rights (1955, 1979) as well as legal ones (1973, 1994), but not in a way that allows for much direct comparison. Bentham (1970 [1782]) wrote extensively about the analysis of legal rights, but, notoriously, thought that the idea of natural moral rights was conceptual nonsense.