RIGHTS IN REM AND THE MULTITAL MÉNAGERIE

Unlike rights in personam, which are held against a limited number of people (paradigmatically, one), rights in rem are held against everyone else in the world. Among other things, “everyone” denotes a dynamic collection of persons. However, in Wesley Hohfeld’s analysis of rights, every right is a relation between exactly two people. For Hohfeld, a right in rem must therefore be analysed as an aggregate of rights, where each relation in the aggregate features the right-holder at one pole and one other person in the world at the other. Even for aficionados, this is one of the oddest aspects of Hohfeld’s account — which he crowns with a curious label to boot, “multital” right —and critics have had a field day with it. For example, Penner (2020) criticises Hohfeld’s multital analysis on the grounds that its information costs are too high. In this paper, I show how Hohfeld’s treatment of rights in rem can be amended to avoid Penner’s critique.

Duke Scholars

Author Gopal Sreenivasan Philosophy