Responsibilities and rights go hand-in-hand. Philosophers say that they are correlative concepts and that for any given responsibility there is a corresponding right that can be readily identified and vice-versa. For example, if I claim that I have the right to breath fresh air, then one responsibility of those who produce and manufacture goods is to insure that they leave the air clean. Rights, thus, imply responsibilities.
A right can be defined as a claim of entitlement that people make in various contexts. Sometimes such claims or entitlements are legal in nature while other times rights are moral or ethical and are not protected by any legal statutes. In either case, we often make judgments about people based upon whether we find them respectful of our or someone else's bona fide rights or whether we find them willing to abridge our or other people's rights.
There are a host of different kinds of rights and they can be further divided into differing kinds. A short list of rights might include such categories as 1) basic human rights, 2) rights that pertain to members of certain well-defined groups and 3) economic rights. The UN Declaration of Human Rights would serve as a good example of the first category. Here, fundamental rights that insure the life and liberty of individuals are proclaimed. Women's rights, children's rights, the rights of classes of people protected by statutes such as minority rights and even student rights all serve as good examples of rights that one might enjoy depending upon whether or not one could be counted as a member of the group that is protected by the right.
Finally, there are rights that have to do with economic well-being. The classic example here is that of individual property rights. At one time, this economic right was reserved by the elitist few who ruled over a land. The "Divine Right of Kings" was pointed to as the sole existing right at one time. Today, however, many more enjoy various economic rights although it has be argued that such rights should and can still be extended further.
Rights also have a role to play in defining the concept of professionalism. For example, many argue that there is a basic right to health care and that it is one that imposes itself upon health care professionals and limits their own right to make a profit on the delivery of health care. Also, professionals themselves can lay claim to several rights. The right to work in an autonomous fashion counts as a professional right.
What is interesting to ethicists are the number of occasions when the rights of professionals and the rights of those who seek professional services conflict in such a way that an ethical dilemma is the result. In fact, when the supposed rights of any stakeholders collide, the result is often major moral disagreement. Gun control, abortion, capital punishment and censorship, among others, are good examples of ethical issues where stakeholder rights are central concerns.
When these moral disagreements arise, then we need to use our skills of ethical analysis to sort out the moral mazes. In the analysis of the ethical issues, problems and dilemmas then, we need to be sure to raise the question of rights as correlatives to responsibilities. We should ask as the final step of our VCR analysis: What are the various rights of the stakeholders in the issue, problem, or dilemma? And if there is a conflict among these rights, we need to determine which of them should take priority.