What is wrong with Rights? ~ Part 1

? Rahul Dutta | March 28, 2023 | 16th Issue

Introduction

Over Eight Billion people on the planet are at various phases of rights. Everyone is seeking justice to win one's bounty of rights. The rights are not free radicals. Instead, rights hold characteristics like a magnet. For every right, there is an obligation or duty.?

The core of every country is its constitution. The constitution vests people with rights and creates an instrument of government to serve people. The?US Constitution?begins with the words WE THE PEOPLE, affirming to its people that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens. Both the US Constitution and the first ten amendments to the US Constitution, known as?the Bill of Rights, empowers the people of the United States.

Similarly, the Constitution of India, begins with the exact words, WE THE PEOPLE, and has?adopted?fundamental rights along with an independent judiciary from the US Constitution.?Article 51A?of the Constitution of India assigns eleven duties to the citizens. However, unlike fundamental rights, the writs do not enforce fundamental obligations. The Indian constitution provides guaranteed fundamental rights against the government without placing the essential duties on the same footing. ?Does the different treatments of rights and duties weaken the fibre of the constitution?

Rights Divided by Duties

So far, the relationship between rights and duties has been considered laterally, pushing rights and responsibilities against each other.?The financial ratio?analysis and?Young's modulus?elasticity measurement of solids in Physics inspired the postulation of the vertical relationship between rights and obligations.

The ratio of rights as the numerator and duties as the denominator, {rights/duties}, is a legal parallel to the financial ratios with a caveat that there are no serial numbers to quantify in law. The progress made in Data Science may help in justice delivery through data analysis to further test the postulate. The attempt to push the rights/duties ratio is now made using the binary numbers 0 and 1.?

For the 0 value of rights and one value of duty, the value of the ratio is 0. It signifies a system of governance wherein no rights are vested with the people. The no rights signify cessation of freedom. No right means slavery! The abject depletion of rights invites a blow to peace, stability, security and imminent revolt against the rights-sucking regime.

For the one value of rights and one value of duty, the value of the ratio is 1. It signifies the ideal balance between rights and responsibilities. It is a utopian regime that exists only in theory.

For the one value of rights and 0 value of duties, the value of the ratio is ∞ (infinity). It signifies absolute rights without any obligation. There is no right without its association with a task. Right is a privilege. The privilege is secured by society's consent and the State's sanction. Standalone requests notify the state of anarchy wherein the reign of ‘might is right’ dances shamelessly.

The Young Modulus of Law: Justice Elasticity

A step further from the ratio of rights and duties, let me reframe young modulus, the measure of elasticity in solids, in law. Justice, in its simplest, is fairness. Defining Justice as fairness is a very primitive definition. However, to begin as a postulate, it should serve the purpose of testing in its primitiveness. Fairness is a distribution of rights to individuals and assigning?duty in rem?for the rest of the people so that the ratio of rights and responsibilities is as close as possible to one. In other words, fairness can be calibrated with the balance of rights and duties. An ineffable characteristic of Law is its dynamic nature. The law ought to be as active as the agility of the progress of society. The dynamic nature equips law with elasticity to match the progress made on the time dimension.

Young Modulus of Law = Justice Elasticity = [Justice /{rights/duties}]

Justice in the numerator and the ratio of rights and duties in the denominator is like quantifying justice as fairness in equal chunks of value attributed to the balance of rights and duties. The higher the value achieved for justice elasticity, the better manifestation of the cohesive sustenance of society. The justice elasticity is also a measure of the nimbleness of justice delivery to reallocate rights and duties in the dynamics of progress.?

As we have seen above, the value of the ratio of rights and duties varies between zero and infinity, and the justice elasticity value ranges in the reverse direction between infinity and zero.

The values between zero and one and the ratio of rights and duties less than one give a multiplier effect to Justice. It underlines the importance of duties over rights. Both rights can be respected without fear of law, and enforcement of rights for breach can be more effortless and robust when the value of duties is higher than the value of rights on a scale of zero and one.

The one value achieved by the ratio of rights and duties does not affect Justice. Perhaps, it can be interpreted as balancing equal and opposite interests, making Justice serene with lesser disputes to decide. The ratio becomes zero for zero value to rights; therefore, the value for Justice elasticity becomes infinite. The infinite multiplier makes justice elasticity redundant.??The infinite value to justice elasticity may be inferred as the cessation of rights, and with no rights to attribute, justice is unthinkable. When the value for ratio is infinite due to zero value to duties, justice elasticity secures zero value. It is like an assertion of rights without duties, deforming rights as self-will as the rule of law, making justice meaningless.?