Where does right collide?

Euclid's Elements (c. 300 BCE), in the tenth definition of Book I, fixed the right angle: when a straight line standing on another makes the two adjacent angles equal to one another, each of the equal angles is a right angle, later measured as ninety degrees or a quarter of a full turn. It is the reference angle against which two lines are called perpendicular, and it anchors the definition of the square and the Pythagorean relation. This referent is a fixed geometric magnitude, an angle of a set size, and it has nothing to do with a person's justified claim in law or the moral standing of an action in ethics.[1]

Unit

One angle of ninety degrees, a quarter of a full turn

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Constructed with compass and straightedge, or checked against a set square or a protractor reading ninety degrees

Kant's 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals gave rightness its modern meaning in duty-based ethics: the moral standing of an action, whether it accords with duty and the moral law, held apart from and prior to whatever good the action might bring about. Ross's 1930 The Right and the Good named and developed the contrast, treating the right, what we ought to do, as distinct from the good, what is worth having or being. This referent is a property of actions, their moral standing, and it is not a claim that one person holds against another in law or a fixed angle in geometry.[2][3]

Unit

The moral standing of one action, whether it is right or wrong to do

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Judged by moral argument against a principle or duty, such as the categorical imperative or a set of prima facie duties

Hohfeld's 1913 Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning gave the term its precise legal meaning: a right properly so called is a claim held by one person that correlates exactly with a duty owed by another, so that to say A has a right is to say B is bound to act or to forbear toward A. Hohfeld set this claim-right apart from privileges, powers, and immunities, which ordinary speech also calls rights. This referent is an enforceable entitlement paired with another party's obligation, and it differs from the rightness of an action in ethics and from a ninety-degree angle in geometry.[4]

Unit

One claim held by a party, matched to a duty owed by another party

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Identified in legal analysis by locating the correlative duty and the party who bears it