GEORGIA LAW REVIEW - StephanKinsella.com

1158 GEORGIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 13: 1143
they have the abilities of agency, and this must be with a view to
taking on the fullest degree of the generic rights of which they are
capable so long as this does not result in harm to themselves or
others. All other adult humans have the generic rights in full. In the
case of the human fetus, this possession of generic rights raises
problems of the justification of abortion because of possible conflicts
with the rights of the mother; I have considered this else~here.~
The equation of the generic rights with human rights thus does
not derogate from the universality of the latter. It enables us to
understand the varying degrees to which the rights are had by cer-
tain humans, as well as the connection of human rights with action
and practice. The derivation of these rights from the argument for
the PGC also enables us to understand the traditional view that
human rights are grounded in reason so that they have a normative
necessity or categorical obligatoriness that goes beyond the variable
contents of social customs or positive laws.
IV.
There remain two broad questions about human rights as so far
delineated. First, the rights to freedom and well-being are very gen-
eral. What more specific contents do they have, and how are these
contents related to one another? Second, human rights are often
thought of in terms of political effectuation and legal enforcement.
How does this relation operate in the case of the generic rights?
Should all of them be legally enforced or only some, and how is this
to be determined?
To answer the first question we must analyze the components of
well-being and of freedom. It was noted above that well-being,
viewed as the abilities and conditions required for agency, comprises
three kinds of goods: basic, nonsubtractive, and additive. Basic
goods are the essential preconditions of action, such as life, physical
integrity, and mental equilibrium. Thus a person's basic rights -
his rights to basic goods - are violated when he is killed, starved,
physically incapacitated, terrorized, or subjected to mentally de-
ranging drugs. The basic rights are also violated in such cases as
where a person is drowning or starving and another person who, at
no comparable cost to himself, could rescue him or give him food
knowingly fails to do so.
Nonsubtractive goods are the abilities and conditions required for
Id. at 142-44.