Module Activities

1. Listen to the preliminary lecture on rights theory. Notice that it focuses on the correlativity of rights and duties. (An outline of the key points of this lecture is given below.)
2. You will be divided into small groups of 4 or 5. Each group will be assigned a right claim pertinent to a given professional area. (You also have the option of choosing your own right claim.) Sample rights claims used in past include property, free consent, freedom of conscience, free speech, due process, privacy. More problematic claims can be added to provide a chance to reflect on the fact that not every right claim satisfies the justification framework in this module.
3. Your group will complete the justification framework by filling in the table presented below. (See table working out the right claim of due process below.)
4. Each group will prepare a brief presentation on its right claim that it will present to the class. This presentation will center on displaying and unpacking the right table the group has prepared. Other students are encouraged to ask questions and formulate objections.
5. Each groups should copy its table and distribute it to the other groups in class. In this way, you will jointly prepare a rights manual for use in decision-making exercises.

Problematic Right Claims

1. El derecho para actuar de acuerdo a la conciencia etica y rechazar trabajos en los cuales exista una variacion de opinones morales.
2. El derecho de expresar juicio profesional, y hacer pronunciamientos publicos que sean consistentes con restricciones corporativas sobre la informacion propietaria.
3. El derecho a la lealtad corporativa y la libertad de que sea hecho un chivo expiatorio para catastrofes naturales, ineptitud de administracion u otras fuerzas mas alla del control del ingeniero.
4. El derecho a buscar el mejoramiento personal mediante estudios postgraduados y envolverse en asociaciones profesionales.
5. .El derecho a participar en actividades de partidos politicos fuera de las horas de trabajo.
6. El derecho a solicitar posiciones superiores con otras companias sin que la companis en la que trabaje tome represalias contra el ingeniero.
7. El derecho al debido proceso de ley y la libertad de que se le apliquen penalidades arbitrarias o despidos.
8. El derecho a apelar por revision ante una asociacion profesional, ombudsman o arbitro independiente.
9. El derecho a la privacidad personal.
10. These rights are taken from Etica en la Practica Profesional de la Ingenieria by Wilfredo Munoz Roman published in 1998 by the Colegio de Ingenieros y Agrimensores de Puerto Rico and Universidad Politecnica de Puerto Rico

Summary of Kantian Formalism

• Kantian formalism bases respect on the human individual’s intrinsic value as an autonomous being. Using this as a point of departure, we can develop a method for identifying, spelling out, and justifying the rights and duties that go with professional computing. This framework can be summarized in four general propositions:
• 1. Definition: A right is an essential capacity of action that others are obliged to recognize and respect. This definition follows from autonomy. Autonomy can be broken down into a series of specific capacities. Rights claims arise when we identify these capacities and take social action to protect them. Rights are inviolable and cannot be overridden even when overriding would bring about substantial public utility.
• 2. All rights claims must satisfy three requirements. They must be (1) essential to the autonomy of individuals and (2) vulnerable so that they require special recognition and protection (on the part of both individuals and society). Moreover, the burden of recognizing and respecting a claim as a right must not deprive others of something essential. In other words, it must be (3) feasible for both individuals and social groups to recognize and respect legitimate rights claims.
• 3. Definition: A duty is a rule or principle requiring that we both recognize and respect the legitimate rights claims of others. Duties attendant on a given right fall into three general forms: (a) duties not to deprive, (b) duties to prevent deprivation, and (c) duties to aid the deprived.
• 4. Rights and duties are correlative; for every right there is a correlative series of duties to recognize and respect that right.
• These four summary points together form a system of professional and occupational rights and correlative duties.

Right Claim Justification Framework

• Essential: To say that a right is essential to autonomy is to say that it highlights a capacity whose exercise is necessary to the general exercise of autonomy. For example, autonomy is based on certain knowledge skills. Hence, we have a right to an education to develop the knowledge required by autonomy, or we have a right to the knowledge that produces informed consent. In general, rights are devices for recognizing certain capacities as essential to autonomy and respecting individuals in their exercise of these capacities.
• Vulnerable: The exercise of the capacity protected under the right needs protection. Individuals may interfere with us in our attempt to exercise our rights. Groups, corporations, and governments might overwhelm us and prevent us from exercising our essential capacities. In short, the exercise of the capacity requires some sort of protection. For example, an individual’s privacy is vulnerable to violation. People can gain access to our computers without our authorization and view the information we have stored. They can even use this information to harm us in some way. The right to privacy, thus, protects certain capacities of action that are vulnerable to interference from others. Individual and social energy needs to be expended to protect our privacy.
• Feasible: Rights make claims over others; they imply duties that others have. These claims must not deprive the correlative duty-holders of anything essential. In other words, my rights claims over you are not so extensive as to deprive you of your rights. My right to life should not deprive you of your right to self-protection were I to attack you. Thus, the scope of my right claims over you and the rest of society are limited by your ability to reciprocate. I cannot push my claims over you to recognize and respect my rights to the point where you are deprived of something essential.

Types of Duty Correlative to a Right

• Duty not to deprive: We have a basic duty not to violate the rights of others. This entails that we must both recognize and respect these rights. For example, computing specialists have the duty not to deprive others of their rights to privacy by hacking into private files.
• Duty to prevent deprivation: Professionals, because of their knowledge, are often in the position to prevent others from depriving third parties of their rights. For example, a computing specialist may find that a client is not taking sufficient pains to protect the confidentiality of information about customers. Outsiders could access this information and use it without the consent of the customers. The computing specialist could prevent this violation of privacy by advising the client on ways to protect this information, say, through encryption. The computing specialist is not about to violate the customers’ rights to privacy. But because of special knowledge and skill, the computing specialist may be in a position to prevent others from violating this right.
• Duty to aid the deprived: Finally, when others have their rights violated, we have the duty to aid them in their recovery from damages. For example, a computing specialist might have a duty to serve as an expert witness in a lawsuit in which the plaintiff seeks to recover damages suffered from having her right to privacy violated. Part of this duty would include accurate, impartial, and expert testimony.

Application of Right/Duty Framework

1. We can identify and define specific rights such as due process. Moreover, we can set forth some of the conditions involved in recognizing and respecting this right.
2. Due Process can be justified by showing that it is essential to autonomy, vulnerable, and feasible.
3. Right holders can be specified.
4. Correlative duties and duty holders can be specified.
5. Finally, the correlative duty-levels can be specified as the duties not to violate rights, duties to prevent rights violations (whenever feasible), and the duties to aid the deprived (whenever is feasible).

Exercise: Develop a Rights Table

1. Describe the claim (essential capacity of action) made by the right. For example, due process claims the right to a serious organizational grievance procedure that will enable the right-holder to respond to a decision that has an adverse impact on his or her interests. It may also be necessary in some situations to specify the claim’s necessary conditions.
2. Justify the right claim using the rights justification framework. In other words show that the right claim is essential, vulnerable, and feasible.
3. Provide an example of a situation in which the right claim becomes active. For example, an engineer may claim a right to due process in order to appeal what he or she considers an unfair dismissal, transfer, or performance evaluation.
4. Identify the correlative duty-holder(s) that need to take steps to recognize and respect the right. For example, private and government organizations may be duty-bound to create due process procedures to recognize and respect this right.
5. Further spell out the right by showing what actions the correlative duties involve. For example, a manager should not violate an employee's due process right by firing him or her without just cause. The organization's human resources department might carry out a training program to help managers avoid depriving employees of this right. The organization could aid the deprived by designing and implementing binding arbitration involving an impartial third party.

Conclusion: Topics for Further Reflection

• Not every claim to a right is a legitimate or justifiable claim. The purpose of this framework is to get you into the habit of thinking critically and skeptically about the rights claims that you and others make. Every legitimate right claim is essential, vulnerable, and feasible. Correlative duties are sorted out according to different levels (not to deprive, prevent deprivation, and aid the deprived); this, in turn, is based on the capacity of the correlative duty holder to carry them out. Finally, duties correlative to rights cannot deprive the duty-holder of something essential.
• Unless you integrate your right and its correlative duties into the context of your professional or practical domain, it will remain abstract and irrelevant. Think about your right in the context of the real world. Think of everyday situations in which the right and its correlative duties will arise. Invent cases and scenarios. If you are an engineering student, think of informed consent in terms of the public’s right to understand and consent to the risks associated with engineering projects. If you are a computing student think of what you can do with computing knowledge and skills to respect or violate privacy rights. Don’t stop with an abstract accounting of the right and its correlative duties.
• Rights and duties underlie professional codes of ethics. But this is not always obvious. For example, the right of free and informed consent underlies much of the engineer’s interaction with the public, especially the code responsibility to hold paramount public health, safety, and welfare. Look at the different stakeholder relations covered in a code of ethics. (In engineering this would include public, client, profession, and peer.) What are the rights and duties outlined in these stakeholder relations? How are they covered in codes of ethics?
• This module is effective in counter-acting the tendency to invent rights and use them to rationalize dubious actions and intentions. Think of rights claims as credit backed by a promise to pay at a later time. If you make a right claim, be ready to justify it. If someone else makes a right claim, make them back it up with the justification framework presented in this module.