Lisa Hecht

Sometimes it is permissible to infringe an individual’s rights against harm in order to save others from greater harm. It has been a matter of extensive debate if and by whom victims of permissible rights infringements are owed compensation. This chapter defends the view that the beneficiaries of a permissible rights infringement have special compensatory duties to the victim. The chapter identifies two desiderata that an account of the beneficiaries’ compensatory duties should meet, and shows that two existing defenses, the _Beneficiary Pays Principle_ and the _Fairness Principle_, fail to satisfy them. The chapter argues that the beneficiaries owe compensation on grounds of the _Special Duty Principle_. Their compensatory duty is best understood as a special duty to alleviate harm. The duty is particularly stringent because victims and beneficiaries stand in a morally tragic relationship.

When a person finds herself in peril her right to be rescued is activated and a rescue duty is imposed on those who are in a position to help. In this article, I argue that the activation of the right to be rescued needs to be suitably constrained so that the rescuee is prevented from arbitrarily controlling the normative situation between herself and potential rescuers. Such control would be in conflict with the moral equality of persons. I argue that the activation of the right to be rescued should be conditional on the person having a justification for the action that caused her peril. One implication of my view is that the right to be rescued cannot fulfill the function that Jonathan Quong ascribes to it. The right to be rescued turns out to be an unsuitable ground for the necessity condition which constrains the permissible use of defensive force.

A provocateur does not pose a threat of harm. Hence, a forceful response to provocation is generally considered wrongful. And yet, a provocateur is often denied recourse to a self-defence justification if she defends herself against such a violent response. In recent work, Kimberly Ferzan argues that a provocateur forfeits defensive rights but this forfeiture cannot be explained in the same way as an aggressor’s rights forfeiture. Ordinarily, one forfeits the right not to be harmed and to self-defend against harm by threatening to violate another person’s rights. But provocateurs forfeit their defensive rights because they bring about the situation in which defence becomes necessary. As I argue here, positing these two types of forfeiture justifications is neither desirable nor necessary. I suggest a unified rights forfeiture account that grounds rights forfeiture in moral responsibility for an unjust threat. My account offers clearer distinctions than alternative unified accounts, which I briefly discuss. Furthermore, the account can provide better explanations of intuitively plausible judgements. A provocateur will have less extensive defensive rights than an innocent victim, but will not lose all her defensive rights simply because ‘she started it.’