The concept of rights stands at the very center of our legal universe. An imaginary alternative legal universe might have similar legal norms to ours, except that they are centered on the concept of duty. Is there any significant difference between these two legal universes? The Hohfeldian assumption of complete correlativity between rights and duties might imply that the difference between these two universes is merely a matter of rhetoric. This Article, however, argues that a rights-based legal world would presumably be significantly different from a legal world based upon duties. For this purpose, the Article examines the way in which contradictory norms are resolved. A rights-based system decides cases of contradictory norms according to a process that is different from that used by a duty-based system. The Article is devoted to examining the roots of this difference, its significance and its social implications. Alongside the discussion of the classical and modern legal sources from the Western legal tradition, the Article contains a comparative discussion of Jewish law sources, which demonstrates a typical example of a duty-based legal system.

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在相互矛盾的规范之间做出决定：基于权利的法律与基于义务的法律及其社会影响

权利的概念是我们法律领域的核心。一个想象的替代法律世界可能有与我们相似的法律规范，只是它们以责任概念为中心。这两个法律领域之间有什么显着差异吗？霍菲尔德关于权利和义务之间完全相关性的假设可能意味着这两个世界之间的差异仅仅是修辞问题。然而，本文认为，以权利为基础的法律世界可能与以义务为基础的法律世界大不相同。为此，本文考察了解决相互矛盾的规范的方式。基于权利的系统根据不同于基于义务的系统所使用的过程来决定冲突规范的情况。本文致力于研究这种差异的根源、意义和社会影响。除了对来自西方法律传统的古典和现代法律渊源的讨论外，本文还包含对犹太法律渊源的比较讨论，这展示了基于义务的法律体系的典型例子。