CENTRAL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH BIHAR

SCHOOL OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE

JURISPRUDENCE

PROJECT ON – HOHFELD’S ANALYSIS OF RIGHTS: AN

EXAMINATION

SUBMITTED BY – SUBMITTED TO –
Shreya Dr. Digvijay Singh Sir
BA LLB (Hons.) Assistant Professor
En. No - CUSB2013125110 School of Law and Governance
SEC - B Central University of South Bihar
5th Semester (2020-2025)

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to thank my faculty Dr. Digvijay Singh, whose guidance helped me a lot with
structuring of my project. I take this opportunity to express my deep sense of gratitude for his
guidance and encouragement which sustained my efforts on all stages of this project.

I owe the present accomplishment of my project to my friends, who helped me immensely with
materials throughout the project and without whom I could not have completed it in the present
way.
I would also like to extend my gratitude to my parents and all those unseen hands that helped
me out at every stage of my project.

SHREYA
CUSB2013125110

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 CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 4
2. ABOUT HOHFELD - A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE................................................ 4
3. A PRIMER TO HOHFELD’S ANALYSIS ............................................................. 4
4. JURAL RELATIONS .............................................................................................. 5
5. RELEVANCE OF HOHFELDIAN
ANALYSIS………………………………………………………………………..6
6. IMPACT OF HOHFELDIAN ANALYSIS IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN
PRACTICE………………………………………………………………………...7
7. CONSTITUTION OF INDIA THROUGH HOHFELDIAN
LENSES……………………...................................................................................7
8. THE REQUIREMENT OF TWO PEOPLE FOR HOHFELDIAN ANALYSIS OF
RIGHTS……………………………………………………………………………8
9. HOHFELDIANS PRIMARY CORRELATIVITY
CLAIM………………………………………………………………………….…9
10. FUNCTIONS OF RIGHT- WILL AND INTEREST
THEORY………………………...……………………………………………..10
11. ANALYSIS OF FUNCTION OF
RIGHT………………………………………………………………………….11
12. CRITICISM OF HOHFELD'S THEORY OF
RIGHTS…………………………………………………………………………..11
13. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 14
14. REFERENCES....................................................................................................... 15

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INTRODUCTION
The term that appears most frequently in legal discourse is ‘right’, but it proves to be the most
elusive in terms of its meaning. The law is a right established by an authority above the party
whose purpose is to arbitrate between diverse claims and harmonise them as a whole, whereas
a right is typically defined as what a man considers to be a right from his point of view. In this
assignment, the analysis of rights by the eminent jurist Hohfeld is briefly discussed. In the later
stage of the assignment, the will theory and the interest theory are also discussed briefly.

ABOUT HOHFELD - A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld was born in California in 1879 and died in 1918. He graduated
from the University of California and then became the editor of the Harvard Law Review while
at Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1904. Hohfeld taught at Stanford Law School
for a short time before moving to Yale Law School, where he remained until he died in 1918.

“Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning and Other Legal

Essays” was his seminal work (1919). The book, together with two pieces published in the Yale
Law Journal in 1913 and 1917, encapsulates the majority of Hohfeld’s jurisprudence.

Hohfeld’s analysis continues to be a significant contribution to our current understanding of

the nature of rights. A chair at Yale University is named after Hohfeld to honour his enduring
importance. Hohfeld’s theories are still relevant today, even after a century has passed since
his death and traces of his theories are also evident in the Indian legal justice system.

A PRIMER TO HOHFELD’S ANALYSIS

A ‘right’, according to Hohfeld, is a legal interest that imposes a correlative duty. “If X has a
right against Y to keep off the latter’s land, the correlative (and equivalent) is that Y has an
obligation toward X to stay off the place”, Hohfeld says. In the same way that a ‘privilege’
imposes a comparable and correlative no-right, power imposes a correlative liability and
immunity, resulting in handicap. The contrast between a right and a privilege is particularly
important in this regard.1

He points out that the term ‘right’ was frequently used to refer to a variety of other legal
interests such as powers, privileges, and immunities. This issue was so common that Hohfeld
was able to obtain enough court support in his article to acknowledge it. As a solution, Hohfeld
proposes separating rights, privileges, powers, and immunities, all of which he considers to be
separate legal interests. Surprisingly, he tries to make this distinction based on the legal duties

1
Hohfeld Some Fundamental Legal Conception as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, (1913) 23 YALE LJ.
16.http://www.harvard.edu/faculty/cdonahue/courses/prop/mat/Hohfeld.pdf

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that these interests place on another organisation. Hohfeld’s definition methodology is based
on the usage of correlatives and opposites.2

Because the most fundamental legal relationships are sui generis, attempts at formal definition
are inevitably unsatisfying, if not completely futile. As a result, the most promising course of
action appears to be to display all of the numerous relations in a scheme of ‘opposites’ and
‘correlatives’, and then to demonstrate their unique breadth and application in real examples.

Hofeld’s analysis is majorly based on Salmond’s earlier system. According to Salmond, there
are three categories of rights:3

1. Rights in the strict sense, which are defined as interests protected by the law by
imposing its duties with respect to the rights upon other persons,
2. Liberties are defined as “interests of unrestrained activity”,
3. Powers “when the law actively assists me in making my will effective”.

JURAL RELATIONS

Hohfeld’s dissatisfaction with the premise that all legal relations may be reduced to rights and
duties led to the eight fundamental legal concepts. This was identified as the most significant
impediment to understanding and successful resolution of legal challenges. His notion of jural
relations can be explained through the below-mentioned table:

The vertical arrows connect jural correlatives, or ‘two legal positions that entail each other,’
whereas the diagonal arrows connect jural opposites, or ‘two legal positions that deny each
other.’

2
Lazarev, Hohfeld‟s Analysis of rights: An essential approach to a conceptual and Practical Understanding of
the Nature of Rights, 1 http:// www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/MurUEJL/2005/9.html
3
Fitzgerald P. J., Salmond on Jurisprudence, (12th ed.) p. 217

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RIGHTS AND DUTIES

Hohfeld did not devote much attention to the relationship between rights and duties. According
to him, the term ‘rights’ is mistakenly applied to something that may be a privilege, a power,
or immunity in some cases, but is not a right in the strictest sense. The correlative (and
equivalent) ‘obligation’ provides a method for limiting the word ‘right’ to its specific and most
appropriate meaning.4 Legal rights are always accompanied by legal obligations. This pair of
phrases convey the same legal relationship but from two different perspectives. Hohfeld used
the example of X having a right against Y to keep off of X’s land. The invariable corollary of
this is that Y has a duty to X to keep off X’s territory. According to Hohfeld, the word ‘claim’
is the most accurate and adequate synonym for the word ‘right’ in terms of meaning. If
necessary, state coercion is used to enforce a valid right or claim.

Being granted or having a legal right (or a claim, according to Hohfeld) entails legal protection
from other people’s interference or refusal to provide aid or recompense in connection with a
certain action or state of things. A person who is supposed to refrain from interfering or give
aid or remuneration has a responsibility to do so. A legal position deriving from the imposition
of responsibility on someone else is known as a right or claim.

PRIVILEGES AND NO-RIGHT

The term liberty is preferred by the majority of future jurists over the phrase privilege. These
two terms occupy the same structural position in Hohfeld’s theory, notwithstanding Hohfeld’s
preference for the term privilege. Privileges are permissions to act in a given way without being
held liable for the harm caused to others who, at the same time, are unable to ask the authorities
to intervene. “To the degree that the defendants have privileges, the plaintiffs have no
rights”,5 Hohfeld said. There can’t be a conflict between rights (claims) and privilege. The
correlation of this legal relationship demonstrates that the person against whom liberty is
asserted has no right to the conduct to which liberty pertains. This does not, however, rule out
the possibility of him interfering with the action.

Hohfeld agreed that under legal systems, liberties that are not accompanied by responsibilities
imposed on others to avoid interference with legal action exist, and that there are often strong
political reasons for doing so. When someone is granted legal liberty, he relieves legislators of
the burden of imposing a duty on others. When deciding whether or not to apply the above
requirements in a specific circumstance, a rational legislator may take advantage of political
concerns.

4
A. K. W. Halpin, Hohfeld's Conceptions: From Eight to Two, 44 Cambridge L.J. 435 (1985).
5
Hohfeld, Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, 23 Yale Law Journal 41
(1913). http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/cdonahue/courses/prop/mat/Hohfeld.pdf

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For example, the fundamental rights mentioned in Part III of the Indian Constitution, are in fact
the ‘privileges’ mentioned by Hohfeld as they provide that the State has a correlative ‘no-right’
to interfere in the exercise of these freedoms.

POWER AND LIABILITIES

The first two pairs of legal positions (right/duty and liberty/no-right) are first-order relations,
while the following two pairs (power/liability and immunity/disability) are second-order
relations. Some first-order relations are directly applied to human behaviour and social
interactions without the use of any second-order relations. All second-order relations, on the
other hand, are applied directly to human entitlements and only indirectly to human behaviour
and social interactions.6

According to Hohfeld, a jural relationship can be modified in two ways: by facts that are not
under the volitional control of one or more people, or by facts that are under the volitional
control of human beings. He defined powers in terms of the second group of circumstances, in
which a person with the dominant volitional control has the legal authority to change jural
relations in a specific way. This relationship is held between two people with respect to certain
actions or conditions of events, similar to other jural interactions. Hohfeld gave several
instances of legal powers, including property-related powers (property abandonment and
ability to transfer property), contractual obligation-creating capabilities, and the establishment
of an agency relationship. Susceptibility to someone exercising power is defined as liability.
Deference to a shift in a person’s entitlement isn’t always unpleasant. A promisee, like an
inheritor, may profit from an entitlement conferred by a promisor.

When it comes to liability, Hohfeld brought up the issue of those who work in ‘public callings’
like innkeepers. Rather than the common perception that innkeepers have a duty to all other
parties, Hohfeld stressed that an innkeeper has liability and that travellers have a correlative
authority. As a result, travellers have the legal authority to bind an innkeeper to accept them as
guests by submitting an acceptable tender. If jurists conflated Hohfeldian powers with rights,
there would be a lot of uproars. Simmonds gives an example of how power can be linked with
a duty not to exercise it, such as when a nonowner has the authority to transfer title to a bona
fide purchaser but will commit an infraction while doing so. If we use the word ‘right’ to define
the power, we must declare that the non-owner has the right to sell the property.

IMMUNITY AND DISABILITY

Immunity refers to the state of not being able to have one’s rights altered by another. A lack of
power to change legal entitlements is defined as a disability. The basic difference between
powers and immunities is the same as the general contrast between rights and privileges. A

6
Id.

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right is an affirmative claim against someone else, whereas a privilege is someone’s exemption
from someone else’s right claim. Similarly, power is someone’s affirmative control over a
specific jural relation about another, whereas immunity is someone’s independence from
another’s legal power or control over some jural relations.7

For example, if A enjoys immunity against B, B is limited in his or her ability to exercise
powers relating to the immunity’s covered entitlements. Immunity rights are a common
occurrence in constitutional texts. As a result, if the people are guaranteed freedom of speech
by the Constitution, the legislature cannot wield any power in this regard. While the legislature
is disabled, the people have immunity rights to freedom of speech.

RELEVANCE OF HOHFELDIAN ANALYSIS

W. N. Hohfeld's analysis of legal rights has often been extolled as a paradigm of conceptual
clarity and rigor which anyone interested in the nature of legal rights and liberties should study.
Hohfeld explains exactly how several conceptions commonly called legal rights are related,
thereby providing a powerful tool for understanding discourse that utilizes the language of legal
rights. But Hohfeld's analysis, though recognized and acclaimed by many legal philosophers,
has not been incorporated.8The confusion which Hohfeld attempted to review continues to
persist even today and hence his analysis can be used to improve the quality of legal discourse
by saving judges and other lawyers from conceptual errors they are otherwise prone to
commit.9The widespread tendency to confuse rights with liberties can lead a jurist to make
conceptual errors and fallacious inferences. For example, if one believes that the right to free
speech is a right (in the strict sense), but in fact it is only a liberty, then one will wrongly believe
that others have duties of non-interference which are correlative to this 'right'. Glanville
Williams offers this as one of the clearest examples of a liberty unprotected by corresponding
duties. Surely, he argues, no one is under a duty to assist me in my speech, or to provide a
forum from which I may speak, or to preserve silence while I am speaking. The duties that may
be thought to be owed me in virtue of my 'right' to free speech have no specific connection with
freedom of speech at all. To be sure, persons have duties not to gag me, or tear me from my
podium while I am making a speech. But, Williams insists, these duties are not correlative to
the 'right' to free speech, but simply are part of the familiar duty not to commit a battery.
Consequently, persons owe no duties to an individual who exercises his 'right' to free speech
that are not already owed him in virtue of other rights he possesses. For this reason, Williams

7
SALMOND, JURISPRUDENCE, 42 (12th ed., 2008)
8
Arvind P. Datar, Hohfeldian Analysis- Application of, by the Indian Judiciary: A lawyer’s Perspective, 21 SCC
(weekly) (Dec. 21,2012)
9
Thomas D. Perry Paradigm of Philosophy: Hohfeld on Legal Rights (march 9th, 2013).
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20009647

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maintains that it is incorrect to describe freedom of speech as a legal right: it is merely a legal
liberty.10

IMPACT OF HOHFELDIAN ANALYSIS IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN

PRACTICE

The influence of Hohfeld's analysis and the impact of the imperative contained in those
analyses to be discriminatory in the use of rights terminology, although persuasive must not be
exaggerated. In practice the language of rights in almost every context including the context of
judicial reasoning, but especially in the informal context, has developed without regard to the
Hohfeldian imperative. The long-standing constitutional provisions relating to rights in the
USA - the Bill of Rights - are stated more in terms of immunities and disabilities than claim
rights. The First Amendment to the American Constitution for instance, in providing that
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for redress", creates an immunity for
individuals with a correlative disability on the part of the government. Hohfeld has not only
failed to make an impact on constitutional structures which predate his essay but also modern
constitutions have not been entirely as rigorous as Hohfeld proposes. The practice in most legal
systems is to mix up rights, privileges, powers and immunities under the rubric of legal or
constitutional protection of rights. In Indian constitution also word right has only been used to
denote claim, privilege, power and liberty.11 That linguistically there are differences between
claim rights, privileges, powers and immunities is obvious enough but it is equally true that in
practice, hardly anybody (including lawyers and judges) pays much attention to the
recommendation to keep them separate in usage. While such a restricted impact may be said to
have judged the Hohfeldian analysis harshly, it is by no means unfair.

CONSTITUTION OF INDIA THROUGH HOHFELDIAN LENSES

Fundamental Rights: A close reading of the text of Part III of the Constitution of India indicates
that broadly it deals with two kinds of legal interest. First, freedom or liberties on
citizens/persons: for instance, the right under Article 19, the right to life and liberty under
Article 21, the right to religion under Article 26 etc. Secondly, prohibition on the Government
from acting contrary to certain principles: the rule of equality as embodied in Articles 14, 15
and 16 for example.12 It is a well settled law that the guarantee of fundamental rights provided
by the Part III of the constitution is only against the state as defined under Article 12 of the
constitution.13 The protection under the first category of rights i.e. freedom or liberties on

10
Stephen D. Hudson and Douglas N. Husak, Legal Rights: How Useful Is Hohfeldian Analysis? (March 9th,
2013).
11
Id. at 17
12
Arvind P. Datar, Hohfeldian Analysis- Application of, by the Indian Judiciary: A lawyer’s Perspective, 23 SCC
(weekly) (Dec. 21,2012)
13
22 P.D. Shadasani v. Central Bank of India, AIR 1952 SC 59

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citizens/persons (for instance, the right under Article 19, the right to life and liberty under
Article 21, the right to religion under Article 26 etc.) is only against interference by the
government in a citizen’s exercise of rights. Thus, state is not under a duty to secure to its every
citizen, the enjoyment of rights enshrined therein, but only that the state must not act in a
manner that infringes these rights. Indisputably absence of such a “duty” is indicative of the
fact that constitution by virtue of this provisions doesn’t confer Hohfeldian “right” to the
enjoyment of freedoms embodied in Part III. To the contrary, the legal interests conferred by
Part III are in fact, Hohfeldian “Privileges” i.e. they provide that state has a correlative “no
right” to interfere in the exercise of these freedoms. This is not to suggest however, that part
III of the constitution confers no Hohfeldian “rights” at all. Though Part III confers no “right”
to the positive enjoyment of liberties embodied therein, it imposes a limited Hohfeldian “duty”
on the state to not act in violation of these rights and thereby conferring a corresponding
Hohfeldian right on citizens against State interference resulting in curtailment of those
freedoms.

Parliamentary Privileges, Immunities and Power

Another area of constitutional law which offers possibilities for a Hohfeldian analysis is the
protection of parliamentary privileges under Article 105 and Article 194 of the Indian
Constitution. Article 105(1) provides for freedom of speech in parliament. The legal interest
that this provision confers on Parliament (as in the case of fundamental rights such as Article
21 and Article 19) is that of a "privilege" which imposes a correlative “no right” of interference
by others. Article 105(2) provides that No member of Parliament shall be liable to any
proceedings in any court in respect of anything said or any vote given by him in Parliament or
any committee thereof, and no person shall be so liable in respect of the publication by or under
the authority of either House of Parliament of any report, paper, votes or proceedings. The
import of this provision is to immunize members of Parliament from the institution of legal
proceedings in respect of anything said in furtherance of their exercise of the right conferred
by Article 105(1). Therefore Article 105(2) confers a “Hohfeldian immunity” on members of
parliament whereas disability on every other legal person.14 The third provision of the Article
105 provides “power” to parliament to enact legislation defining their Power, privileges and
immunities which constitute a liability on others to abide by it.

THE REQUIREMENT OF TWO PEOPLE FOR HOHFELDIAN

ANALYSIS OF RIGHTS

As previously stated Hohfeld owned all rights to be relations between two distinct individuals.
As a result, as per his analysis, there is no such thing as a “right to bodily integrity”. Rather,
one person (“X”) has a claim-right to a certain content against another person (“Y”) (insofar as
this is, in part, a claim-right). As the indefinite article suggests, there are as many rights as there

14
supra note 21

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are individual people who hold them multiplied by the number of individual people who hold
them against whom they are held. That’s a lot of privileges.

Hohfeld’s only concession to ordinary thought’s conflation of these rights into one is to
recommend that rights of similar substance that one person holds against many persons be
referred to as “paucital rights”, and rights of similar content that one holds against all people
as “multital rights” (Hohfeld suggested that a right be dubbed an “unital right” if it has no
similarly contented cousins). However, these are essentially categories of rights based on their
content relationships with other rights; notwithstanding these classifications, Hohfeld’s basic
atomic rights exist exclusively between two individuals.

HOHFELD’S PRIMARY CORRELATIVITY CLAIM

The two correlativity arguments made by Hohfeld are crucial to his rights analysis. While the
focus of the main criticism of Hohfeld is on the following section on his secondary correlativity
thesis (that the correlative of an active right is only the absence of a passive right in another),
others have questioned whether Hohfeld’s primary correlativity claim (that the correlative of
every passive right is a duty on the part of others to perform the act that is the content of the
passive right) is true. This more radical critique of correlativity takes two forms. One approach
is to deny the universality of rights/duties correlativity in all viable moral theories, and
consequently the necessity of it.

FUNCTIONS OF RIGHT – WILL THEORY AND INTEREST THEORY

In jurisprudence, there are two main theories of the function of rights:

1. The will theory, and

2. The interest theory.

WILL THEORY

H.L.A Hart is said to have founded the concept of the will theory of rights, which is also known
as choice theory. Will theorists argue that having a right makes you a ‘small-scale sovereign’?
A will theorist, for example, claims that the purpose of a right is to give its possessor power
over another’s responsibility.15 The will theorist claims that your property right, depicted in the
diagram above, is a right since it includes the ability to waive (or cancel, or transfer) the duties
of others. You have ‘sovereignty’ over your computer, which means you have the option of
allowing others to touch it or not. A promisee is similarly ‘sovereign’ over the promisor’s

15
Dias & Hughes: Jurisprudence, p. 250

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actions: a promisee has a right because he can waive (or annul) the promisor’s obligation to
maintain the promise.

CRITICISM OF THE WILL THEORY

While jurists such as Kant, Hegel & Hume supported this theory, it was fairly criticised by
Duguit. According to him, the law is based on an objective will rather than a subjective will.
The law’s goal is to protect only those acts that contribute to social cohesion. He went on to
say that the concept of subjective right is a metaphysical construct.

INTEREST THEORY

However, the theorists of interest theory disagree. The function of a right, according to interest
theorists, is to serve the right interests. According to the interest theorist, an owner has a right
not because he or she has a choice, but because possession benefits the owner. The promisees
have a right because they have an interest in the promise’s fulfilment or (alternatively) in the
ability to make voluntary ties with others. Your rights, according to the interest theorist, are the
Hohfeldian happenings that are beneficial to you. Jeremy Bentham is known to have initiated
the interest in the theory of rights.

CRITICISM OF THE INTEREST THEORY

Salmond criticised the interest theory, claiming that the state does not protect the interest. It is
necessary for the state to safeguard and recognise an interest in order to grant a legal right.
While Gay claims that this approach is partially valid because a legal right is not an interest in
and of itself, but rather serves to defend an individual’s interests. He also claimed that legal
rights impart the right to do a certain act/to refrain on a person by imposing a legal duty on
them through the ‘state’s’ legal agency. On the other hand, Dr Allen viewed that it might be
claimed that neither theory is opposed to the other; rather, it is a synthesis of the two. He
attempted to reconcile these two views by pointing out that the core of legal right appears to be
the legally guaranteed power to realise an interest, rather than legally guaranteed power in and
of itself. Both views, it might be stated, are necessary components of the legal right.

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ANALYSIS OF THE FUNCTIONS OF RIGHT

Each rights theory, including interest and will, has three features: 16

1. An ultimate purpose that all rights (or at least those covered by the particular version
of the theory) purport to serve;
2. Means of protecting or effecting that purpose, such as imposing duties on other
parties, including enforcement mechanisms, and so on;
3. Specifying which candidates constitute rights, i.e., which types of normative
positions (e.g., Hohfeldian claims, liberties, and so on).

CRITICISM OF HOHFELD’S THEORY OF RIGHTS

W. N. Hohfeld’s legal rights analysis has been lauded as a model of conceptual clarity and
rigour that everyone interested in the nature of legal rights and liberties should study. Hohfeld
illustrates how numerous conceptions usually referred to as legal rights are related, providing
a useful tool for comprehending conversation that uses legal rights terminology. However,
despite the fact that numerous legal philosophers have praised and commended Hohfeld’s
analysis, it has not been included. The ambiguity that Hohfeld intended to clarify still exists
today, and hence, his analysis can be utilised to improve the quality of legal discourse by
preventing judges and other lawyers from making conceptual errors that they would otherwise
make.

The common conflation of rights and liberties can lead to erroneous inferences and conceptual
mistakes in the law. For example, if one believes that the right to free speech is a right (in the
strict sense) when it is actually liberty, one will incorrectly believe that others have non-
interference duties that are correlative to this ‘right.’ This is one of the clearest examples of
liberty that is not secured by equivalent obligations, according to Glanville Williams. Surely,
he claims, no one owes him a duty to help him with his speech, to provide a platform for him
to talk from, or to maintain silence while I speak. The responsibilities that may be attributed to
him as a result of his ‘right’ to free speech have nothing to do with it. Persons must, of course,
refrain from gagging him or removing him from the podium while he was speaking.

These obligations, however, are not related to the ‘right’ to free speech, according to Williams,
but are merely part of the standard responsibility not to commit a battery. As a result, no duties
are owed to an individual who exercises his ‘right’ to free speech that is not already assigned

16
John Salmond, Jurisprudence, (London: Sweet and Maxwell, Limited, 1937). Com. Joseph William Singer, The
Legal Rights Debate in Analytical Jurisprudence from Bentham to Hohfeld, 1982 Wisconsin Law Review 975,
1049 (1982).

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to him under his other rights. As a result, Williams contends that describing freedom of
expression as a legal right is incorrect: it is only legal liberty.

CONCLUSION
Hohfeld not only corrected small technical errors but also provided a significant critique of the
past legal rights and liberties notions. Finally, there is the issue of Hohfeld’s scheme’s utility.
The debate over Hohfeld’s scheme of jural relations has proven to be one of the most
complicated in legal analytical history. The process of assessing its utility and relevance is still
in progress. Hohfeld had analysed the fundamental grounds of our legal theories and
institutions, as well as the foundations of our rights theories, when developing his analytical
approach. Hohfeld’s study entailed a detailed and an in-depth analysis in which he attempted
to reflect people’s genuine beliefs about rights. As a result, Hohfeld’s analysis is of essential
practical significance, despite its analytical nature. As he points out, appropriate analysis is
required for proper practical application, and “the deeper the study, the greater one’s
understanding of the law’s wholeness and harmony”.

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REFERENCES:

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
• JULIUS STONE, LEGAL SYSTEM AND LAWYERS‟ REASONING, 138 (2nd ed.,
2004)
• SALMOND, JURISPRUDENCE, 278 (11th ed.)
• R W M DIAS, JURISPRUDENCE, 25 (5th ed. 1994)
WEBLIOGRAPHY:
• http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/cdonahue/courses/prop/mat/Hohfeld.pdf
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/20009647
• http://www.pravri.hr/hr/savjetovanja/jurihohfelds.pdf
ARTICLES:
• Arvind P. Datar, Hohfeldian Analysis- Application of, by the Indian Judiciary: A
lawyer’s Perspective, 17 SCC (weekly) (Dec. 21,2012)
• Hohfeld, Some Fundamental Legal Conception as Applied in Judicial Reasoning,
(1913) 23 YALE L.J. 16.
http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/cdonahue/courses/prop/mat/Hohfeld.pdf
• Thomas D. Perry Paradigm of Philosophy: Hohfeld on Legal Rights
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20009647
• Allen Thomas O‟Rourke, Refuge from a jurisprudence of doubt: Hohfeldian analysis
of constitutional law papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=1358336

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