Ante las abigarradas listas de tales derechos y la variedad de fundamentaciones de los mismos, propongo basarlos en el principio de lícita participación en el bien común según las necesidades, correlativo al deber de contribuir a ese bien común según las capacidades. Tal esquema puede ser compatible con la propiedad privada según viene concebida en el ordenamiento jurídico-constitucional español, o sea sujeta a una función social. El reconocimiento de tales derecho entra en contradicción con varios enfoques, como el libertario y el maltusiano.
The right to something: Positive rights as participations in the common good
Summary
Positive or welfare rights can be formalized through sentences with the deontic operator of licitness whose content is an existential quantification. Such rights imply that other people are subject to obligations with a positive content (to give or to do), in virtue of the non-hindrance rule.
With a variegated set of catalogues of those rights and a variety of alternative groundings, I propose to base them on the principle of a licit participation in the common good according to everyone's needs, correlated with the duty to contribute to the common good according to one's capabilities. Such a scheme may be compatible with private ownership as conceived within the Spanish constitutional order, bound to its social function. Acknowledging such rights clashes with several approaches, namely the libertarian and the malthusian ones.