Republican Liberty as Liberty within Rights1

(forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, vol. 8)

Daniel Layman

Abstract

What is the relationship between republican liberty and rights? The received view is that although
rights play an important role in republican theory, non-domination is conceptually distinct from
rights enjoyment; like liberty as non-interference, republican liberty is a stand-alone conception of
liberty that we can understand and perhaps even promote without invoking rights at all. I argue
that this is a confusion, one that has left our view of republican liberty, and indeed the entire liberty
debate, substantially out of focus. Republican liberty is not, like liberty as non-interference, an
account of liberty that is conceptually independent of rights and which may (or may not) stand in
relationships of varying importance to rights. To the contrary, republican liberty just is liberty
within rights; to enjoy all of one’s rights is to enjoy full non-domination, and to enjoy full non-
domination is to enjoy all of one’s rights. Rights enjoyment, we may say, is necessary and
sufficient for republican liberty. It is necessary for republican liberty because there is no way to
specify the range within which independence from others’ unconstrained wills matters without
specifying particular rights that people may claim against one another. And it is sufficient for
republican liberty because to enjoy a right is to possess securely a valid claim against one or more
other people, where security is a function of institutional sanctions sufficient to dissuade others
from violating that right. Thus, ‘R is a right and so requires entrenchment against others’ arbitrary
power’ adds nothing to ‘R is a right.’ Once it becomes clear that republican liberty is liberty within
rights, the liberty debate reappears as a contest that is fundamentally about whether there is
conceptual daylight between liberty and rights.

1) Introduction

Ever since Philip Pettit (1997) and Quentin Skinner (1997) launched the current

neoclassical republican research program more than two decades ago, something like the following

schema has dominated the liberty debates in political theory. In one corner stand the (misleadingly

named) liberals, who argue that liberty is the absence of interference.2 In the other corner are the

republicans, who argue that liberty is the absence of domination—that is, the absence of arbitrary

1
Thanks for helpful comments on earlier drafts are due to Ian Carter, Billy Christmas, John Lawless, Matthew
LeBar, Sean McKeever, Bas van der Vossen, Jocelyn Wilson, the Cottage Group, an anonymous referee, and
audiences in Oxford, Durham, and New Orleans.
2
It is misleading to call the defenders of liberty as non-interference ‘liberals’ as opposed to republicans because
some paradigmatic liberals, including Locke (cf. Layman 2020) and perhaps even Hayek (cf. Irving 2020), endorse a
version of the republican theory of liberty. Moreover, as Kalyvas and Katznelson (2008) have argued, several
strands of republicanism evolved into strands of liberalism during the early modern period.

1
power. Members of both camps are happy to appeal to the idea of rights and put it to work within

their theories, but on neither account of liberty are rights constitutive of liberty. That is, although

members of both camps may (and often do) say that rights are of the first importance for securing

liberty, there is no question of political liberty being identical to liberty within rights.

My aim here is to show that this view of the conceptual landscape is wrong, or at least

badly out of focus. This is because republican liberty is not really a stand-alone conception of

liberty capable of being framed in isolation from the idea of rights. Rather, republican liberty just

is liberty within rights, without conceptual remainder.3 Thus, what we really encounter in the

liberty debates is not a contest between two notions of liberty distinct from rights that stand in

various adventitious relationships to rights, but rather a contest between liberty as non-interference

and liberty as rights enjoyment. Every rights theory just is a theory of non-domination, and no

theory of non-domination can function without specifying a set of rights.5 So, rights are necessary

and sufficient for non-domination.

It is important to emphasize that I do not mean to argue that liberty as non-domination

collapses into liberty as non-interference or that non-interference otherwise bests non-domination

as an account of liberty.7 Although it is perhaps tempting to read my claim that rights are necessary

and sufficient for republican liberty as the claim that privileged spheres of non-interference are

necessary and sufficient for republican liberty, this is not my view. Some of the rights that concern

3
The view I defend here is in some ways similar to the one Bas van der Vossen has recently defended in the context
of interpreting Locke’s famous proviso, which requires appropriators to leave “enough, and as good” for others
(Locke 1988: 288 (§27)). According to Van der Vossen, part of what it is to enjoy a right is to enjoy it under
conditions of “non-subjection,” which Van der Vossen defines as follows: “P stands in a relation of non-subjection
to Q with respect to some natural right R to the extent that P’s ability to enjoy R does not depend on Q” (Van der
Vossen 2020: 11). I certainly agree. However, unlike Van der Vossen, who holds that republicanism is simply
wrong, I hold that rights are necessary and sufficient for republicanism.
5
I will not argue that every rights theory is necessarily a plausible theory of non-domination. Some rights theory
might, for instance, assign all of the rights to one person. Such a theory would be a theory of non-domination that
specifies a very narrow and implausible range of non-domination.
7
For arguments to this effect, see Kramer 2008 and Carter 2008.

2
me here do indeed have as their content privileged spheres of non-interference. But others do not,

and I certainly do not mean to claim that republicanism collapses into rights against interference

in particular and thereby into a version of liberty as non-interference.8

It is also worth emphasizing that, although I will make no attempt to hide my sympathy for

the republican project and will do some cursory work to motivate it in the course of spelling out

its central commitments, it is not my primary aim here to defend the republican conception of

liberty against its competitors. To the contrary, my aim is to show that republican liberty is liberty

within rights. I thus recognize that nothing I say here is likely to convince the committed non-

interference theorist that there is anything fundamental to liberty apart from the absence of

interference. Nevertheless, to the extent that my argument succeeds, the parties to the contest

between non-domination and non-interference will face pressure to reconceptualize the

disagreement between them. Whereas the non-interference theorist holds that the absence of

interference—which often is, and should be, protected within rights—is liberty proper, the

republican should identify liberty with rights enjoyment, where rights can and do vest rights-

holders with positive powers as well as with spaces of non-interference.

I proceed as follows. In section 2, I set out the concept of non-domination and clarify it by

reviewing the principle argument in its favor. In section 3, I distinguish rights from mere liberties

by drawing out their characteristic protective function and the formal features of rights that support

this function. With these preliminaries in hand, I argue in section 4 that non-domination requires

rights in order to specify the range of choices within which people must enjoy non-domination in

order to be free. Consequently, rights are necessary for republican liberty. In section 5, I argue that

the rights we need in order to specify non-domination to particular ranges of choice already

8
Thanks to Ian Carter for pressing me to clarify this.

3
contain, without appeal to any further value, the very demand for security against others’ wills that

defines non-domination. Consequently, rights are sufficient for republican liberty. With the main

argument complete, I consider a number of objections in section 6 before briefly concluding in

section 7.

2) Non-Domination

Liberty as non-domination is liberty as the absence of arbitrary power. What, though,

counts as arbitrary power? Neoclassical republicans disagree on this point. Some, following

Pettit’s original statement, embrace a thick conception of arbitrary power according to which

power is arbitrary to the extent that it is not forced to track the “avowable interests” of those subject

to it (Pettit 2006: 280). Others, following Lovett, affirm a thin conception of arbitrary power

according to which power is arbitrary to the extent that it is not externally constrained by law or

other social systems, regardless of whether those constraints relate positively to anyone’s interests

(Lovett 2010: 119). Still others, following Pettit’s later work, adopt a procedural conception on

which power is arbitrary to the extent that those subject to it lack control over it (Pettit 2012: 70).10

Despite these disagreements about how to frame non-domination, neoclassical republicans

agree that liberty must be counterfactually robust in order adequately to capture what we value in

liberty as a basic social and political good. That is, the neoclassical republicans agree that whether

a person is free with respect to a choice turns on interference in certain nearby possible worlds no

less than on interference in the actual world.11 If interference in a choice occurs in possible worlds

that differ from the actual world only in that other people’s preferences are different in them, we

may say that the person facing the choice depends on others’ arbitrary power and is to that extent

10
For critical discussion, see Kolodny 2019.
11
I owe this framing of republicanism’s modality in terms of possible worlds to Christian List (2006).

4
unfree. In order to show how this framework works and why it is attractive, much more detail is

required. In order to provide that detail, I will work through what I take to be the best argument

for the republican conception of liberty. This argument, it is important to note, is not an attempt to

analyze the concept of liberty in general, much less an attempt to define the English word ‘liberty,’

which bears a very wide semantic range. Rather, it is an attempt to show that liberty as a

fundamental social and political value is counterfactually robust in more or less the way

republicanism says that it is.

The argument, which I draw, with some modification, from Pettit (2012: 64-65), proceeds

in two steps, each one showing why an increase in robustness is necessary in order to achieve a

satisfactory conception of liberty as a social and political value. First, let us suppose, with

Hobbes—but not, it is important to note, with contemporary defenders of liberty as non-

interference—that all that is required for liberty is non-interference with the particular action that

an agent actually decides to perform at a particular time (Hobbes 1996: 146). Suppose, for

example, that I am deliberating about whether to eat lunch in the park or in the break room. I decide

on the park and then walk there, where I eat my lunch without interference. But had I decided to

eat lunch in the break room, a waiting villain would have accosted me and stolen my lunch.

According to the Hobbesian picture, I act freely in this case because no one impeded the action I

chose to perform. Although there is clearly a sense in which my lunchtime activity was free, that

sense is not one that answers to a plausible social and political ideal of freedom. For, on the

assumption that my freedom in this scenario did answer to that ideal, it would follow that I could

have freed myself by adapting my preferences to those of the waiting villain. Surely, though,

freedom as a moral ideal cannot count adaptation to oppressors’ whims as a source of liberation.

To make the same point with a more serious (and realistic) example, suppose that there is a

5
community that tends to vote for candidates of one party and so is permitted by bosses from that

party to vote without interference. However, those community members would quickly find their

access to the polls blocked if they formed a preference for the opposing political party. It is absurd

to think of this community as free with respect to suffrage in any morally significant sense. For it

is absurd to think that a community could secure its freedom by adapting its political preferences

to match those of a looming power.

The ideal of freedom, then, requires at least one level of counterfactual robustness: To

enjoy freedom within a choice, a person must not face interference with respect to any of the

options that compose the option set relevant to the choice. Or, to put the same point in terms of

degrees rather than a binary, the degree to which a person is free within a choice must be a function

of the degree to which all of her relevant options are unimpeded, not just the one she in fact prefers.

Nearly all opponents of republicanism would grant this much: The standard conception of freedom

as non-interference takes the relevant scope of non-interference to be an agent’s whole pertinent

option set, not just the option she in fact chooses (e.g. Kramer 2003, Berlin 1958). But the

republican pushes the reasoning of this first step one step further: Just as a person does not count

as free simply because it suits another person to refrain from interfering with a particular option in

her option set, a person does not count as free just because it suits another person not to interfere

with any of the options in her option set. To return to our lunch example from before, I do not

count as free with respect to my lunch if the lunch villain allows me unfettered choice to eat lunch

wherever I wish, but only because he feels like it. If he could, with impunity, close down my lunch

options just because he felt like it, I am not free within those options, at least not in the sense that

matters to liberty as a political ideal. For if this disposition of the villain’s preferences were

sufficient for my morally significant freedom, it would follow that I could increase my morally

6
significant freedom through servility—by kowtowing, sucking up, and so forth.12 To return to our

voting example, a community is not a community of free people if it has unimpeded access to

voting simply because an overlord with standing to interfere at will feels like granting them

unimpeded access.

3) Rights

With the conceptual core of republican liberty in hand, we are positioned to turn to the

relationship between republican liberty and rights. In order for my claim that republican liberty

collapses into liberty within rights to be plausible (or even make much sense), we need to get clear

on what rights are, at least insofar as the argument of this paper is concerned. Broadly speaking, I

take rights to be valid claims (Feinberg 1970: 249-257). That is, a person has a right to some object,

action, or state of affairs if, and only if, she has standing to claim that object, action, or state of

affairs from one or more other people. It is important to emphasize that rights so-understood are

not conceptually limited to valid claims against others’ interference, or what are sometimes called

‘negative rights.’ To the contrary, there may be valid claims to others’ positive action, or to their

realization of positive states of affairs. Which rights of either sort actually obtain must, of course,

be decided on the relevant moral merits. My present point is simply that ‘right’ does not mean

‘claim to a particular space of non-interference.’ Insofar as the mere idea of rights is concerned, a

right to, say, security against sexual harassment in one’s workplace is no more problematic than a

right against being shoved to the ground while innocently walking. For, in each case, a person—

12
Some proponents of liberty as non-interference might object that they, too, can capture the unfreedom of the
person who must suck up in order to avoid interference, since that person cannot perform the conjunctive action of
both behaving as she prefers to and not sucking up. Fair enough. What is important for my purposes is not that it is
impossible to translate the republican insight about independence from others’ wills into the language of non-
interference, but rather that, for reasons we will shortly consider, rights are necessary and sufficient to capture that
insight. Thanks to Ian Carter for pressing me on this point.

7
the rights-holder—has (assuming the right in question is genuine) a valid claim against another

person to some act, object or state of affairs.

Rights, then, are valid claims. But before we can proceed to the relationship between rights

and republican liberty, we need to spell out some more details regarding their character and

purpose. In an important essay published prior to the bulk of his material on republicanism, Pettit

provides as clear and plausible an analysis of claim rights as any that have appeared in the literature

(Pettit 1986: 68-71). According to Pettit, what distinguishes rights proper from mere liberties (and

other normative entities, e.g. moral goals) is the “protective role” that rights characteristically play,

together with the characteristics that suit them to play it (Pettit 1986: 68-73). When we invoke a

right held by a person, A, we mean “to ensure not just that A is taken into account, but that A is

actually treated in a certain way. Rights are invoked to protect people, not merely to give their

interests a place in the calculus of decision” (Pettit 1986: 69).

Rights have three features that permit them to play this protective role. First, rights are

“personalized” (Pettit 1986: 69). This means that rights are not tradable across persons, even when

violating one person’s right would lead to fewer violations of the same right elsewhere. To unpack

this a bit further, suppose that, barring extraordinary circumstances that we may safely ignore here,

every person has a right not to be seized by other people without their permission. Further suppose

that, as it turns out, you can minimize unrightful seizures by unrightfully seizing me. Since my

right against seizure is, like all rights, personalized, this fact does not license you to seize me. For

my right against seizure is, at moral bottom, my right that serves to protect me. It is not an instance

of some greater entity, “The Right Against Seizure,” that merits protection.

Second, rights are “privileged” (Pettit 1986: 70). Whereas the personalization of rights

forbids sacrificing one person’s right for the sake of better protecting the same right elsewhere, the

8
privileged character of rights means that rights may be traded off against other kinds of values

only under fairly exceptional circumstances. Although there is likely to be disagreement about

which circumstances are relevantly exceptional, our example of a right against seizure can help

flesh out the general idea. If I possess this right, the fact that the consequences of seizing me under

some set of circumstances would be unambiguously better than refraining from seizing me is

insufficient to justify another person in seizing me. If, for example, Angela’s good standing at

work depends on securing the final space in a subway car into which I am about to step (on my

way to an idle stroll in the park), she still may not seize me on account of the privileged character

of my right against seizure. Now suppose, though, that I am about to unwittingly bump a child

onto the subway tracks, and that this can be prevented by a bystander only if she tackles me. It

seems clear that she is permitted to tackle me, my right against seizure notwithstanding. There are,

of course, many cases in which the evil of the outcome to be avoided falls between the evils at

issue in these two cases, and there is a debate to be had (elsewhere!) about where to draw the line.

The point that matters here is simply that rights are privileged in a way that places them beyond

ordinary consequentialist calculation.

Third, rights are “precise” (Pettit 1986: 70). This means that a right narrowly specifies the

range of action or choice that it protects for the right holder. The precision condition is important

because rights cannot protect their bearers unless they are sufficiently precise for people to claim

them against others who might in turn be expected to recognize them. To stick with our running

example, the right against seizure is sufficiently determinate for both the right holder and other

people to know what it protects and, consequently, when it is proper to invoke it and necessary to

respect it. But now consider a purported right to bodily autonomy, full stop. This purported right

would fail to meet the precision condition, since it does not specify narrowly the claims that those

9
who hold it are entitled to make. Such a purported right may be a moral goal or value that helps

determine people’s rights, but it cannot be a right per se.13

Rights, then, are personalized, privileged, precise claims.14 With this much in hand, we

need to distinguish (using language derived from Locke) between having a right and enjoying a

right. Locke draws out the distinction as part of his explanation of why people might ever accept

the strictures of political life:

IF Man in the State of Nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute Lord of

his own Person and Possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no Body, why

will he part with his Freedom?... To which ‘tis obvious to Answer, that though in

the state of Nature he hath such a right, yet the Enjoyment of it is very uncertain,

and constantly exposed to the Invasion of others. (Locke 1988: 350 (§27))

To have a right is simply to be assigned a right by one or more of the normative frameworks within

which one is situated. For instance, if we suppose, with Locke, that there is a natural law, people

have all and only the natural rights that natural law assigns them. So, by Locke’s lights, I have a

right to the unowned resources with which I “mix” my labor (Locke 1988: 287-288 (§27)). More

mundanely, people possess all and only the positive legal rights assigned to them by relevant

positive law. I, for instance, have a positive legal right to confront witnesses against me because

13
The precision condition entails that many purported human rights are not really rights at all, but rather moral
goals. For related discussion, see O’Neill 2000: 97-112.
14
Many authors distinguish between will theories (sometimes called ‘choice theories’) of rights and interest theories
of rights. According to Leif Weinar, “ a will theorist asserts that the function of a right is to give its holder,” while
“interest theorists maintain that the function of a right is to further the rights-holder’s interests” (Weinar 2020:
2.2.2). Thus stated, the distinction between will theories and interest theories fails to distinguish between (a) the
telos, or point, and (b) how rights characteristically function. I take no stand here on the first matter, and I do not
mean for my treatment (in section 4 below) of possible ways to identify rights to suggest that I endorse any
particular answer to it. With respect to the operation of rights, however, I have staked out a definite position, albeit
one that I take to be entirely unoriginal; since rights are claims, they operate via acts of claiming and, consequently,
through the will.

10
American law assigns me that right. In neither case, however, may we infer from the fact that

someone has a right that she is unlikely to suffer violations of it. In order to not just have a right

but also enjoy it, one must be secure with respect to it. That is, a person enjoys her rights to the

extent that (a) she does not suffer violations of them and (b) she has them within a social

framework (often, but not necessarily, a legal framework) that insulates them from others’

preferences. So, for instance, people only enjoy their natural right to control the fruits of their labor

on unowned resources if social institutions of some kind secure their ability to do so, regardless of

what others might prefer. And I enjoy my positive legal right to confront witnesses against me

only if my legal culture actually secures this right; it does not suffice for the right merely to be on

the books. To enjoy a right, then is to (a) have it (b) securely. Moreover, the enjoyment of rights,

as opposed to the mere having of rights, is what constitutes the protection for rights holders that it

is the normative role of rights to provide.

Rights enjoyment, I have just said, requires institutionally safeguarded security for rights

that insulates them from others’ preferences. But what, exactly, constitutes security in the relevant

sense? On the face of it, is tempting to think that the sort of security that matters here is simply a

matter of how difficult it is for people to violate rights successfully. If this is correct, my right

against seizure is secure to the extent that someone who resolved to seize me would be unable to

do so. This, however, can’t be right. For it entails that many (if not most) of our rights are

chronically insecure under anything like normal social conditions. If I live in an open society, any

of the thousands of people I encounter on a daily basis could successfully tackle me if she resolved

to do so. But certainly, such quotidian susceptibility to seizure does not suffice to render my right

insecure.

11
 One possible response here is to say that what matters to rights security is not the likelihood

that someone resolved to violate a right will succeed, but instead the likelihood that anyone will

resolve to violate rights in the first place. There is, to be sure, something plausible about this;

whether a shared culture of respect for rights obtains within a community must have something to

do with whether rights are secure within it. Nevertheless, it can hardly be the case that the sheer

absence of others’ willingness to violate my rights is sufficient to constitute my rights’ security.

For if such an absence were sufficient, it would suffice for the security of my rights if, for any

number of good or bad reasons, each person in my community simply had a settled preference not

to violate my rights. We would have to say, for instance, that my right against seizure is secure if

everyone in my community happens to be very squeamish about touching others. If everyone I

encounter is squeamish in this way, no one I encounter will resolve to seize me. But surely the

personal predilections of my fellows are insufficient to render my rights secure within my

community, regardless of how stable those predilections might be.

Since the mere fact that others are disinclined to violate my rights is insufficient to render

them secure, perhaps sanctions for rights violations are the crux of the matter. On the simplest

version of a sanctions-based account of rights security, a right is secure to the extent that the right

holder’s community, whether through governmental or other means, credibly threatens to punish

those who violate it and carries out those threats whenever violations occur. In many cases, the

relevant means of punishment will be political, and the sanctions will be criminal. But there is no

reason to exclude at this point what Mill calls “social penalties,” which the members of a

community administer without the aid of political mechanisms or, typically, any formal

mechanisms at all (Mill 1981: 81). So, on the simplest sanctions-based account, I am secure within

my rights to the extent that others face a credible threat of sanctions—political, social, or both—

12
for violating my rights. The most obvious problem with this framing is that it is compatible with

people habitually choosing to violate rights despite a credible threat of sanctions for doing so.

Although it seems wrong to say that my rights are secure merely because no one is likely to violate

them, it also seems wrong to say that my rights can be secure even if many people are disposed to

violate them. A more plausible version of the sanctions-based account holds that rights are secure

to the extent that (a) prospective rights violators face a credible threat of sanctions, and (b) those

sanctions actually dissuade people from violating rights.

This framing seems much more promising. However, an adjustment is in order: Although

it does seem that a credible threat of sanctions for rights violations is a necessary condition of

security within rights, and although it does seem that those sanctions must be sufficient to dissuade

someone who would otherwise resolve to violate rights, it seems wrong to insist that sanctions be

necessary to dissuade people from attempting to violate rights. Imagine a community of strongly

rights respecting people among whom violating rights is morally unthinkable. In such a

community, a credible threat of sanction would rarely be necessary in order to prevent people from

resolving to violate others’ rights. However, such widespread moral respect for rights surely does

not render rights less secure than they would be in a less rights-respecting, but strongly sanction-

fearing, community. Nevertheless, rights security within even the most strongly rights-respecting

community still requires credible threats of sanctions that are sufficient to dissuade people from

violating rights, even if high levels of moral respect mean that those sanctions are not necessary

for this purpose. For, if there were no such sanctions, whether individuals suffer rights violation

would depend on others’ (stable, predictable) good will, and this is incompatible with the idea that

rights must protect their bearers from others, not just at their moral best but also at their moral

worst, even if the worst rarely makes an appearance.

13
 Three clarifications are in order before we move on to consider why rights are necessary

for republican liberty. First, we need to spell out explicitly the relationship between rights

insecurity and rights violation. Perhaps most fundamentally, it is important to note that every case

of rights violation is a case of rights insecurity. Indeed, any case in which a right is in a condition

of being violated is a case in which it is (totally) insecure. Just as we would not say that a house

possesses any degree of security while it is being burgled, we should not say that a right possesses

any degree of security while it is being violated. However, the absence of rights violations is not

sufficient for the presence of rights security: To the extent that my community fails credibly to

threaten, and subsequently to enforce, sufficient sanctions for rights violations, my rights are

insecure, even if no one violates them. For, under such circumstances, nothing apart from others’

personal values and preferences stands between my rights and their violation. And, to the extent

that this is the case, rights fail to play the protective role that defines them and makes them so

important. Thus, in order for a person to enjoy her rights, her community must secure them to her.

And, to the extent that it fails to do so, she fails to enjoy her rights, even if they remain unviolated.

Second, security in the sense just sketched is a scalar good that can and does exist in greater

and lesser degrees within different communities. With the exception of actual rights violations,

which render the violated right (as held by the victim) totally insecure as long as they endure, rights

security is not an on-or-off affair. So, it usually makes better sense to ask how secure rights are

within a particular community rather than whether they are secure. Moreover, although it is

possible (in the event of actual violation) for a right to be totally insecure, perfect rights security

is practically impossible under imaginable social conditions. Indeed, a condition of perfect rights

security would necessarily be completely free of rights violations, and it is a regrettable truth that

rights violations remain more abundant than we should like, even in the most well-ordered

14
societies. This is true regardless of what the correct account of the content of rights turns out to

be: There is no plausible account of rights on which perfect rights security exists anywhere in the

world or is ever likely to exist.

Third, it is important to emphasize that no feature of rights as I have discussed them here

entails anything about the ultimate moral foundation of rights. More particularly, it is entirely

possible to embrace the enjoyment of personalized, privileged, precise claims as an important

value without endorsing anything like natural rights theory. Indeed, one may even embrace rights

as I have framed them as a part of an overall normative theory that is consequentialist, or even

utilitarian, in character. Such rights require of moral theories only that they leave space for the

conceptual features of rights—personalization, precision, and privilege—to operate. To draw out

this point more fully, consider the position of the rule utilitarian (or, as Smart would say, the

“restricted” utilitarian) vis-à-vis rights (Smart 1956). Such a person might hold that there is, at

bottom, nothing of moral value apart from happiness and that, consequently, our actions ought to

maximize happiness. Nevertheless, she might incorporate into her theory rights as I have

reconstructed them. For there is no reason why she could not allow that people ought to enjoy

personalized, privileged, precise claims against one another. To be sure, if people hold rights so

understood, it is improper to subject those rights to ordinary felicific calculus, as doing so would

amount to rejecting them altogether.15 But since the rule utilitarian stands apart from the act

utilitarian (Smart’s “extreme” utilitarian) precisely in that she doesn’t insist on always applying

that calculus directly to the choices before her, there is no reason to suppose that the rule utilitarian

would be unable to give rights their space, as it were. The act utilitarian, by contrast, cannot

embrace rights as I have construed them, because the direct appeal to felicific calculation that is,

15
The idea of a felicific calculus is, of course, Bentham’s (Bentham 1970: 38-41).

15
at least in principle, appropriate in the case of every choice is incompatible with the privileged

character of rights. If my right is subject to ordinary utility trade-offs, it isn’t really a right at all.

4) Republican Liberty Requires Rights

In this section and the next, I argue that rights are, respectively, necessary and sufficient

for republican liberty. My strategy will rely on two features that are essential to the idea of

republican liberty. One, which we have already encountered, is counterfactual robustness: An

adequate framing of republicanism must capture the idea that a free person is able to act without

interference not just in the actual world, but also in nearby possible worlds in which other people’s

preferences are different. The other is what I will call specification: An adequate framing of

republican liberty must specify the range of action within which counterfactual robustness is

morally important. We will first observe, in this section, that neoclassical republicanism requires

the addition of a rights theory for an adequate account of specification. Then, in the next section,

we will see that rights also satisfy counterfactual robustness.

All three forms of neoclassical republicanism—thick, thin, and procedural—satisfy

counterfactual robustness by definition. On the thick conception, a person is free to the extent that

no one holds the power—used or unused—to interfere in her action in ways that are not forced to

track her avowable interests. On the thin conception, a person is free to the extent that no one has

the power—used or unused—to interfere in her action in ways that are not constrained by stable

social institutions such as law. And on the procedural conception, a person is free to the extent that

no one has the power—used or unused—to interfere in her action in ways that are not subject to

her own control. But regardless of which conception of arbitrariness the republican employs, she

needs to specify a plausible range of action within which counterfactual robustness matters. This

16
is because human life is brimming with dependence on others. Indeed, the more prosperous, stable,

and satisfying human life becomes, the more people depend on one another to define, pursue, and

secure their aims.

An example from the recent republicanism literature drives this point home with some

force. Paul Sagar argues that the republican standard of liberty condemns not just some subset of

especially exploitative or otherwise objectionable systems of property and markets, but all systems

of property and markets insofar as all such systems turn on people’s discretion with respect to

owning, buying, and selling (Sagar 2019: 424).16 If you own something that I want, whether I get

it, and on what terms, is up to you. And, with only a few exceptions, these matters are entirely up

to you; if I want to own something that you currently own, you may offer it or not, at whatever

price you see fit, for any reason or no reason. It therefore seems that all such scenarios subject me

to your arbitrary power and, consequently, compromise my morally significant freedom. Of

course, Pettit, Lovett, and other neoclassical republicans do not mean to claim that we are unfree

to the extent that we depend on others’ transactional choices.17 But they do need to provide a non-

ad hoc account of how to distinguish the cases of dependence that matter from a republican point

of view from those that do not. Moreover, the basic structure of Sagar’s point about markets

expands well beyond the scope of economic interdependence in particular to include any domain

of human life in which we depend on others’ unconstrained personal judgment in order to receive

16
Although Sagar is especially concerned about very large and powerful market actors such as OPEC and Google,
the worry he raises for republicanism turns on the absence of “robust checking mechanisms” characteristic of
systems of property and markets per se (Sagar 2019: 424). Consequently, the force of his challenge to republicanism
extends beyond relationships involving economic behemoths.
17
However, as Alex Gourevitch (2014) has shown, there arose during the American nineteenth century a strain of
republican thought, which he calls “labor republicanism,” that did raise the question of whether any form of market
society is compatible with republican liberty. I think, though, that the labor republicans were more concerned about
employers’ power over workers than with the mere power to dictate market terms for anything at all. For contemporary
concerns along labor republican lines, see Anderson 2017.

17
what we want or need. Addressing the specification problem is therefore a task of the first

importance for the republican project.

The simplest solution to the specification problem is simply to bite the bullet. According

to this solution, every single case in which a person may interfere with another person without

social constraint is a case of objectionably arbitrary power and, consequently, a case of domination.

Not all cases of domination are equally bad, perhaps, and sometimes a little domination—in the

market, say—might be well worth it. Nevertheless, biting the bullet on this point entails that,

barring apotheosis or complete isolation from others, we are always dominated to some degree.

Let’s call this the indiscriminate solution to the specification problem.

There is not, strictly speaking, any conceptual or logical difficulty with the indiscriminate

solution. But it is deeply implausible. The moral point of republicanism is the equal independence

of all persons, and it would very odd indeed to claim that someone’s equal independence is at

risk—to any degree—on account of the fact that she must often pay for things that others own.

Moreover, since the indiscriminate solution entails that social life is inherently and necessarily

dominating, it not only takes the moral bite out of the concept of domination, but threatens to

collapse it into something like “power” on the Foucauldian model (Foucault 1991). The republican

project, though, is not about theorizing domination as an essential building block of social and

political existence, but rather about working—with reasonable hope of at least some success—to

remove domination from social and political structures. A republicanism that posited domination

as part and parcel of society per se would thus be an unrecognizable and, I submit, extremely

unattractive doctrine.

A prima facie more promising solution is that the norm of non-domination applies to all

and only those actions and choices necessary in order for us to regard ourselves as equals and to

18
relate to others accordingly. In particular, we must be free from unconstrained dependence within

all and only those actions and choices necessary in order for us to pass the “eyeball test” with

respect to anyone we might encounter (Pettit 2012: 84).18 Can you look everyone in your culture,

including those in positions of power and authority, squarely in the eye, without cringing, bowing,

or hanging your head? On the solution to the specification problem under consideration, the range

of action and choice within which unconstrained power constitutes domination is the range

wherein unconstrained power renders people unable to pass the eyeball test. If you cannot look

some people squarely in the eye and assert yourself to them as an equal, those people (or the people

in charge of them) must hold objectionably arbitrary power over you. Call this the eyeball test

solution to the specification problem.

The eyeball test solution to the specification problem is circular, or else it collapses non-

domination into a different position. If I cannot look you in the eye, this only matters to non-

domination to the extent that your dominating me explains my diffidence. As Pettit rightly notes,

if I am simply extraordinarily faint-hearted or self-deprecating, my inability to face you is

insignificant insofar as non-domination is concerned (Pettit 2012: 85). If this is right, surely the

range of action which I must be free from unconstrained power cannot simply be the range

compatible with my passing the eyeball test. In order for the eyeball test to matter, there must be

a conceptually independent standard of non-domination that is capable, at least in principle, of

establishing whether I fail (or pass—I could be irrationally bold) the test for the right reasons.

Now, someone might reply that what really matters is that every member of the community be

able to experience themselves as an equal to everyone else, and that the eyeball test does establish

18
Pettit’s (2012: 84-87) use of the eyeball test, it is important to note, is somewhat different from the use I am
considering here. He uses the eyeball to determine when protected choices, specified via the basic liberties that I will
consider below, have been protected to an adequate degree across the entire community.

19
whether people experience themselves in this way. But regardless of whether this is a plausible

position, it is quite distinct from the view that people ought to relate to one another without

objectionably arbitrary power. It does not follow from the fact that someone feels as though she is

(or is not) subject to arbitrary power that she is (or is not) subject to arbitrary power.

Although neither of the solutions to the specification problem so far considered is

successful, each one gets something importantly right about non-domination. The eyeball test

solution correctly identifies the need to restrict the conceptual scope of domination to some subset

of the many relationships that feature discretionary power. But it errs in offering a criterion for

that purpose that cannot avoid either circularity or collapse into an altogether different view.

Conversely, the indiscriminate solution correctly identifies the importance of keeping non-

domination independent from instrumental relationships to other values, thereby avoiding the sort

of collapse and circularity problems that plague the eyeball test solution. But it errs in failing to

restrict the conceptual scope of domination at all. What we need is a solution to the specification

problem that restricts the scope of domination while also allowing non-domination to function, to

at least a significant degree, independently of an instrumental relationship to a more basic value.

In light of these lessons, one promising strategy is to appeal to a list of basic human

capacities (e.g. Nussbaum 2011; Sen 2011) or aspects of human wellbeing (e.g. Griffin 1986).

Since the point of republican theory is to identify and protect the conditions necessary for free

human lives, perhaps we must first identify what living a successful human life requires and then

pursue the absence of arbitrary power within that domain. This is, I think a fairly plausible

approach. Nevertheless, no list of capabilities or factors of wellbeing can solve the specification

problem, at least not without help. For any such list necessarily introduces its own specification

problem. Take, for instance, the capability to form attachments to things outside of ourselves

20
(Nussbaum 2011: 33). Although most would agree that a life in which this capability is seriously

threatened is not an excellent one, it is not plausible that no one may hold unconstrained power

over any action or choice through which another person exercises this capacity. It is not plausible,

for instance, that my college objectionably dominates applicants because it may, subject only to

antidiscrimination law, offer or deny high school seniors the chance to form the life-long

attachments promised in its brochures. Even if a capabilities or wellbeing approach to

republicanism is on the right track, we need to know which actions and choices call for security

against others’ wills on account of the basic capabilities or aspects of wellbeing. And in order to

identify those actions and choices, it isn’t enough to simply list the basic capabilities or aspects of

wellbeing.

What, we need then, is some kind of normative bridge between a general domain within

which arbitrary power matters—the capacity to form attachments, say—and particular actions and

choices within that must be free from arbitrary power. Without such a principle, non-domination

remains implausibly broad, so much so that it threatens to label perfectly normal and beneficial

powers and interactions as dominating. What, though, does such a normative bridge need to be

like? In order for it to avoid simply reproducing the same problem it aims to solve, it must say

something not just about what is important in human lives, but about the particular claims that

people may issue to one another in virtue of what is thus important. That is, in order to bridge the

gap between (1) a capacity or aspect of wellbeing and (2) a particular situation in which it is

objectionable for a person to be subject to another’s will, we need to know (3) the range of claims

that call for protection against the choices of others. This, though, is just to say that we need to

know what rights a person has within a given domain. However important a sphere of life might

be, there is conceptual space between its importance and the rights we have within it, and we need

21
to identify those rights in order to put facts about what is important in human life to the task of

defining the proper sphere of republican liberty.

We are now in a position to see why such everyday susceptibilities to others as we

encounter even in the best-regulated markets needn’t compromise republican liberty. To the extent

that we lack a right to, say, a particular piece of bread or a particular act of house cleaning, our

dependence on others to receive either does not amount to morally objectionable domination. But,

to the extent that we do have a right to something currently subject to personal discretion within

markets (living somewhere other than the streets, for instance), this is a problem for republican

liberty. Similar remarks apply to personal dependence in general, whether distinctly economic or

not: In order to see whether and how the demands of republican liberty apply to a situation, we

must first identify the rights at issue therein.

Although he nowhere endorses quite the reasoning I’ve offered in this section, Pettit has,

in his more recent work, proceeded along lines that answer fairly well to its demands. He argues

that the domain of action within which uncontrolled power matters to republicanism is the domain

necessary for people to live as equals, and that in order to live as equals, people must equally enjoy

basic rights (Pettit 2012: ch. 2). Unlike Rawls, who identifies the basic rights as all and only those

necessary for the pursuit and development of the “moral powers” (i.e. a sense of justice and a

conception of the good), Pettit argues that the basic rights include all and only those that everyone

can both exercise and enjoy at the same time (Rawls 1995: lecture eight; Pettit 2012: 93). For

reasons I have been exploring in this section, I believe that Pettit is very much on the right track

to turn to rights in order to specify the domain of non-domination. But what I want to argue now

is that, in addition to being necessary for specifying the domain of non-domination, rights contain

all that is important to the idea of non-domination. Non-domination just is liberty within rights.

22
 5) Rights Contain Republican Liberty

In the last section, we saw that since morally significant non-domination is limited to non-

domination within the space of rights, we do not have to condemn as dominating such relationships

as ordinary market relationships, within which the content of individuals’ unconstrained discretion

does not overlap with the content of any rights. With this much in hand, though, we need to turn

to another kind of case that threatens the plausibility of non-domination as a moral ideal. In this

kind of case, we are reluctant to say that domination is in play despite the fact that, on the face of

it, someone enjoys unconstrained discretion within the scope of another’s rights. Since the power

at hand in such cases does range over rights, our earlier conclusion that morally significant non-

domination is restricted to the domain of rights offers no guidance.

Two examples from the recent literature will serve to flesh out the kind of case I have in

mind. First, Gerald Gaus has pointed out that if we take the republican criterion of liberty at face

value and without further specification, it follows that our liberty cannot survive a meeting around

a table laden with heavy water jugs, as any of us could choose to smash anyone else over the head

with one (Gaus 2003: 70). Since nothing would prevent someone who resolved to undertake such

head-smashing from doing so successfully, it would appear that each of us is subject to every

potential head-smasher’s arbitrary power in this respect and, consequently, that each of us suffers

a loss of morally significant freedom simply in virtue of this vulnerability. But surely it is absurd

to say that such an everyday vulnerability renders anyone less free in any morally significant sense.

In light of our reasoning in the last section, we may add to Gaus’s point that every person surely

has a right against wanton head smashing if she has a right to anything at all. Thus, the vulnerability

in the example falls within the domain of rights, but we nonetheless balk (or even laugh!) at the

suggestion that it amounts to morally significant unfreedom.

23
 The second case comes from Marilyn Friedman. According to Friedman, the republican

standard of liberty implausibly characterizes a wide swath of traditionally feminine relationships

as sites of domination and, consequently, of unfreedom (Friedman 2008: 252-257). In particular,

the republican conception of freedom seems to class nearly all care relationships as ones in which

the caregiver dominates the person for whom she cares. After all, the reason why one person

requires care, and why another person is in a position to offer it, is that the former is vulnerable or

in need in a way that the latter is not. This power asymmetry makes care relationships possible,

but it also seems to place such relationships beyond the scope of what the republican conception

of liberty can condone. If republicanism can only countenance relationships between fully

autonomous adults, it looks much better suited to the patriarchal, exclusionary context of the

Roman forum in which it was born than to the egalitarian, inclusive context in which we mean to

use it today. And, once again, we cannot overcome this difficulty for republicanism by appealing

to its limited, rights-bound scope, because care relationships characteristically do empower (but,

of course, do not permit) caregivers to violate rights. Just like the potential head smasher,

caregivers have a largely unconstrained capacity to violate rights if they decide to do so. If they

didn’t have this power to a considerable degree, they would lack the space of action and decision

necessary to respond effectively to the other person’s needs.

The thesis of this section offers a solution to the puzzle posed by these two cases—that is,

the puzzle of how we can avoid false positives vis-à-vis domination even where the relevant

unconstrained power ranges over rights: Rights are, in addition to being necessary for non-

domination, sufficient for non-domination. More particularly, the sense in which people must be

free from arbitrary power within their rights in order to enjoy republican freedom is that of security

within rights as discussed in section three above. If a person is, in that sense, secure within her

24
rights against prospective head-smashers, unscrupulous caregivers, or other people with

comparable power to violate rights, she is free—in the full republican sense—within her rights.

To the extent that one enjoys one’s rights, one experiences republican liberty, fully and without

remainder.

Consider once more the account of rights and rights enjoyment we developed, with Pettit’s

help, in section three above. We there distinguished between having a right and enjoying a right.

In order for a person to have a right, it need only be the case that some relevant norm assign it to

her. But in order to enjoy a right, more is required. Most obviously, people fail to enjoy the rights

that they have to the extent that they suffer interference within their scope. But additionally—and

very importantly—they also fail to enjoy their rights to the extent that their rights are insecure,

where insecurity obtains to the extent that communities of rights holders fail credibly to threaten

and to implement sufficient sanctions for rights violations. Rights require security in order to play

their characteristic role of protecting their bearers’ interests rather than merely identifying those

interests or putting them forward for consideration.

The security component of rights enjoyment builds into the complete idea of rights

counterfactual robustness of a particular social and institutional character. When we say that

someone enjoys her unviolated rights to the extent that they are secure against violation, we do not

mean that she enjoys such rights to the extent that they are immune to violation. Rather, rights are

secure to the extent that they are both unviolated and situated within a system of social (perhaps

legal) institutions that subject people to sanctions sufficient, though perhaps not necessary, to

dissuade them from violating rights. So, for example, I enjoy my right against seizure to the extent

that, in addition to being free from actual seizure, other people in my community face sanctions

for seizing me that are sufficient (even if unnecessary) to dissuade them from seizing me. If a

25
person has a right to something, then, this means that she is entitled to security within the scope of

that right, not as an ancillary good distinct from the right itself, but as a feature of the right. To be

a rights holder just is to be entitled to security within its scope. For if this were not the case, rights

could not play the protective role that distinguishes them from other features of the moral

landscape and explains their importance.

In light of these conclusions, we must now ask: What is there to republican freedom within

a right’s scope that is not included in the idea of that right itself? To put the same question

somewhat more formally, how, if at all, do the following two assertions differ?

1) R is a right, so R requires entrenchment against others’ arbitrary power.

2) R is a right.

The answer to which we have been led is that 1) is just a prolix form of 2). There is nothing

in 1) that is not already present in 2), because the demand for counterfactual robustness via

entrenchment is already contained within the idea of a right. If R is a right, this just means that R

calls, as part of what constitutes its enjoyment, for security within its scope no less than for actual

non-interference. And security, we have seen, is counterfactually robust: To the extent that my

rights are secure, it is the case both that (a) my rights will remain unviolated even in many possible

worlds in which people’s desires and preferences are different than in the actual world, and that

(b) possible worlds that do include rights violations also include sanctions for the violators.

Rights, then, are sufficient for non-domination as well as necessary for it. This in turn

means that there is no need for a stand-alone account of non-domination as distinct from an account

of liberty within rights. Such stand-alone non-domination, however, is the central commitment of

neoclassical republicanism. Thus, neoclassical republicanism’s theory of liberty is redundant in

the face of rights theory. This isn’t to say that we should dismiss republican liberty, which is quite

26
right to insist on counterfactual robustness vis-à-vis others’ wills as necessary for liberty. Rather,

it is to say that we should affirm republican liberty as liberty within rights.

Accepting rights—complete with their intrinsic demand for security as a dimension of

enjoyment—as sufficient for republican liberty allows the republican to accommodate the

troubling cases we considered at the outset of this section. Gaus, recall, challenges the republican

to explain why we are not objectionably dominated by another person’s physical capacity to smash

us over the head with a heavy object present during a meeting—thereby, we may add, seriously

violating an important right. The answer, we now see, is that a person is free from domination

within the scope of the physical rights in play in this scenario to the extent that those rights are

secure, where security turns on a conjunction of a low risk of violation together with a credible

threat of sanctions sufficient to dissuade violation. If this security is in place, and if the right against

head smashing remains unviolated, the physically vulnerable person enjoys robust freedom within

the scope of that right. A similar analysis applies to the care relationships that Friedman poses as

a challenge for republicanism. If I am the primary caregiver for a seriously ill family member, I

am able at almost any time to inflict terrible harm on that other person, in serious violation of her

rights. But that does not mean that my family member is insecure within the relevant rights. To

the extent that I face a commonly known and credible threat of sanctions sufficient to dissuade me

from violating her rights, my family member enjoys her rights and, consequently, is free—in the

full republican sense—within their scope.

27
 6) Objections and Replies

With the principle argument now complete, we need to consider some objections it might

face. In this penultimate section, I will frame and then answer what I take to be the four most

pressing objections to the foregoing argument.

First, some might object that rights enjoyment cannot answer to the demands of republican

liberty because, even under the most robust institutions of sanction and accountability human

beings are able to construct, it remains the case that people can violate one another’s rights.

Moreover, it is always possible that someone’s desire to violate a right will be even stronger than

her desire to avoid sanctions. So, security within a right never entails that that right will remain

unviolated. But isn’t the republican idea supposed to be that a person is free only when people

cannot interfere with her on an arbitrary basis? If this were the correct way to interpret the

republican idea of freedom, then republican liberty as liberty within rights would certainly fail to

meet its demands. However, this is not a remotely plausible interpretation of republican freedom,

as it entails that republican freedom is, in principle, incompatible with anything recognizable as a

human society. Republican freedom is meant, as Pettit puts it, to be “freedom of the polis” rather

than “freedom of the heath,” which is to say that republican liberty is meant to be freedom that

people achieve within and through their social and institutional relationships with others rather

than in isolation from others (Pettit 1997: 63). But if republican freedom is a binary good that

exists only when people are literally unable to interfere on an arbitrary basis, only those alone on

the heath, as it were, can ever hope to achieve it. By making republican liberty a scalar good that

obtains to the extent that rights security obtains, republican liberty as liberty within rights, far from

departing from the demands of the republican schema, does what any interpretation of that schema

must do in order for it to be remotely plausible as a theory of social freedom.

28
 The second objection turns on a version of Matthew Kramer’s “gentle giant” case (2008:

41-50; cf. also Kirby 2016). Kramer asks us to imagine a person—the titular giant—who is

extraordinarily powerful, so much so that no one could possible prevent her from behaving in any

way she might choose. However, she respects others deeply and would never dream of interfering

arbitrarily with anyone’s actions or choices. Does the republican have to say that her mere peaceful

existence in or near a community damages others’ freedom? One benefit of my rights-based

conception of republicanism is that it provides a way for the republican to deny that the gentle

giant’s sheer physical capacity to interfere on an arbitrary basis compromises anyone’s liberty. For

what makes a difference to rights security is not anyone’s capacity to violate rights but rather the

sufficiency of sanctions to dissuade people from violating rights. This move, though, might seem

merely to reintroduce the same problem at the level of sanctions: Wouldn’t a giant (gentle or not)

be no less impervious to sanctions than she would be to preemptive attempts to prevent her from

violating rights? If so, sanctions would be insufficient to dissuade the gentle giant from violating

rights if, contrary to her temperament, she resolved to do so, which in turn means that her mere

peaceful existence in or near a community damages others’ freedom.

There are two things to say in response. First of all, in order for this kind of case to have

any bite at all against republican liberty as liberty within rights, it is necessary to specify that our

giant is impervious not only to physical sanctions, but to all sanctions, including economic

penalties, social condemnation, and so forth. After all, what matters to rights security is simply

that (a) people face sanctions (b) imposed by the community (c) that are sufficient to dissuade

rights violations. There is nothing in the view that calls for susceptibility to physical sanctions in

particular. But suppose that the gentle giant is so superhuman as to be utterly unmotivated by any

concerns that might serve as the basis of effective sanctions. If this is the case, then we do want to

29
say that the gentle giant dominates others no less than the Olympian gods dominate the human

characters in Greek mythology. The Greeks (and other cultures with similar mythologies) were

surely right to portray human freedom as necessarily and fundamentally incomplete insofar as

human life as they understood it shared a world stage with such beings.

Third, although insecurity within rights is likely to be asymmetrical in nearly all actual

cases, it is possible in principle for people to be symmetrically insecure within their rights.

Imagine, for instance, a kind of Hobbesian state of nature which, unlike Hobbes’s own construal

of that condition, includes claim rights in the sense we have been discussing here. Such a state of

affairs might offer no rights security for anyone, but everyone in it might be more or less equally

able to violate everyone else’s rights. By the standards we have been articulating, such a (very

unlikely) situation would count as including objectionably arbitrary power within rights and,

consequently, unfreedom. This might seem to call into question my conclusion that rights

enjoyment accommodates republican liberty without remainder. After all, republicanism is, at least

in large part, about the evil of mastery, and the scenario under consideration lacks particular

masters just as surely as it lacks rights security. The correct answer, I think, is that although the

importance of non-domination does turn on our equal moral status, and although rights insecurity

in tension with that status is nearly always asymmetrical, a situation in which we are all

completely—and so equally—insecure within our rights is indeed one in which we are unfree in

the way that republicans should deplore. For although there is a kind of equality in such a

condition, it is not an equality that reflects our shared moral status any more than conventionally

asymmetrical mastery relations reflect that status. To lack a master in this uniquely perverse way

is more akin to having “many masters” than it is to living as one morally equal person among

30
others.19 The capacity of republican liberty as liberty within rights to capture the unfreedom that

would characterize such a situation is therefore a feature rather than a bug.

Fourth, and finally, we should consider an objection from Pettit. In his 1999 postscript to

the second edition to Republicanism, he writes:

Republicans have no reason to think of rights—however richly reconceived—as

Pettit’s point here point is clearly true. Nonetheless, it provides no reason to doubt that

non-domination collapses into rights. For one of the characteristic features of rights is that they

empower their holders to push back—or as Pettit once put it, exercise “antipower”—against those

who might otherwise have the power to ignore their interests (Pettit 1996). For instance, political

rights to vote, stand for office, protest, raise complaints, and introduce referendums are important

precisely because they empower citizens to exert power against the people in authority over them.

Similarly, the right to strike—if we hold, with Alex Gourevitch (2018), that there is such a right—

empowers workers to insist efficaciously on their interests, even when those interests clash with

those of wealthier citizens who occupy the commanding heights of the labor market. Or consider

the right, ever more strongly backed by social norms no less than by law, to bring effective

complaints against bosses and teachers who engage in sexual harassment. This right empowers the

occupants of positions that were, until the effective implementation of such rights, relatively

powerless. Powers for rights-holders are necessarily part of an adequate rights regime, not

something that needs to be introduced through a distinct conceptual apparatus of non-domination.

19
Gourevitch draws out the idea of having many masters in a discussion of the unfree position of Roman slaves,
who faced down a whole social class of masters rather than merely one master in particular (Gourevitch 2013: 602).

31
 7) Conclusion

I have argued that republican liberty is liberty within rights, without remainder. What,

though, about liberty as non-interference, republican liberty’s traditional foe? I have considered

some reasons, which I take to be quite powerful, to believe that the republican is right to insist on

non-domination, even if she errs in failing to see non-domination within the structure of rights

simply as such. Nevertheless, I have hardly refuted the position that liberty is the absence of

interference. So, what lesson should the defenders of non-interference take from this essay? A very

important one: The contest between their view and liberty as non-domination is fundamentally a

fight about the relationship between rights and liberty. If liberty is nothing more than non-

interference, rights are no part of liberty per se, however much they might protect it. To the staunch

proponent of liberty as non-interference, then, I offer at least this much: Your most fundamental

quarrel is with the claim that morally significant liberty is nothing more or less than rights

enjoyment. The relationship between rights and liberty is the real heart of the matter.

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