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Emotions In The Mobilization Of Rights, Kathryn Abrams

Kathryn Abrams

What is the relation between emotions and rights? It is not a question for which answers spring readily to mind, particularly for legal scholars. Rights may be conceived as inhering in, or being conferred upon, a post- Enlightenment, rationalist subject, who is hardly a creature brimming with affect. They may be associated, for some, with abstract claims of entitlement, and, for others, with intricate Hohfeldian frameworks that connect them with state or private obligations: neither association brings emotions to mind. Moreover, the literatures which explore the meaning, mobilization, recognition, and constitutive effects of rights provide little more guidance. Few acknowledge …