Rights,Obligations,Priorities

In Justice: Rights and Wrongs Nicholas Wolterstorff argues for the priority of rights over obligations, and suggests that assigning priority to obligations will take too little account of the wrongs suffered by many types of victim. In this comment on the book I suggest various reasons for assigning priority to obligations, emphasise the importance of offering an account of imperfect as well as perfect obligations, and question the reading of Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork on which some of Wolterstorff’s arguments against the priority of obligations rely.