Dignity, Rights, and Responsibilities New York University School
of Law November 17, 2010 NYU School of Law, Public Law Research
Paper No. 10-83 Taking as its point of departure, a Green Paper
published by the UK government in 2008 urging greater emphasis
on responsibilities, this essay considers various senses of
"responsibility" that may be thought important in and around the
topic of individual rights. Most likely, the authors of the
Green Paper had in mind responsibilities that are correlative to
rights and responsibilities that qualify rights or limit their
exercise. But an additional idea - which has not been properly
considered - is the idea of rights which ARE (in large part)
responsibilities, rights which embody responsibilities. An
obvious example is the right of a parent to bring up his or her
child; it is certainly a right, but it makes reference to an
important task that has to be fulfilled in society (the
upbringing and nurture of this child) and it assigns that task
as a responsibility to the p