Kramer on “Logical Quantification and the Hohfeldian Analysis of Rights”

Matthew H. Kramer, Logical Quantification and the Hohfeldian Analysis of Rights.

Solum’s Download of the Week for April 19, 2025. Available on SSRN.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (a variation of the Workshop template).

Abstract: “Ever since the American legal philosopher Wesley Hohfeld published his analyses of rights in the second decade of the twentieth century, numerous philosophers and legal theorists have grappled with his matrix of legal positions.  Very seldom, however, have the commentators on Hohfeld recognized the importance of logical quantification for any endeavor to elaborate the categories of that matrix fully.  This paper mulls over a few of the manifold ways in which quantification is operative in the legal relationships that Hohfeld delineated.  After furnishing a short conspectus of the Hohfeldian analytical framework which distills those relationships, this paper briefly discusses the two most prominent logical quantifiers and then explores how one’s awareness of the workings of those quantifiers can sharpen one’s grasp of the Hohfeldian analysis.”