Question This is the first sentence of Stanford Encyclopedia's article on rights: "Rights are entitlements (not) to perform certain actions, or (not) to be in certain states...." I checked my English dictionary, and it defines "right", in the relevant sense, as "entitlement", and "entitlement" as "right". In my own language (not English), there aren't even two different words for "right" and "entitlement", they must both be translated to the same word. I think we can conclude that "right" and "entitlement" are synonymous, as much as any two words can be. So do you think that there is any useful reading of that article's first three words? Thank you!

Accepted:

September 10, 2010