Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld

Thinkers1879 to 1918Legal scholar

Works

  • Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, Yale Law Journal, 1913

In Thinking Tools

Known for

He showed that the word right covers four distinct legal relations, claim, privilege, power, and immunity, each with its own correlative (duty, no-right, liability, and disability) and opposite. His scheme is still the standard tool for taking apart what a legal right actually entails.

Tools that draw on Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld (1)

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