Obligations by Scott Veitch, Abingdon, Routledge, 2021, 121 pp, £46.99 (Hardback) and £16.99 (Paperback), ISBN: 978-0-367-34598-3. In this book, Veitch starts with the observation that our social, political, and legal worlds are filled with obligations, yet this has been overshadowed in modernity by a legal prioritisation of rights. We live, it appears, in the ‘age of rights’ according to Veitch, yet the world is dominated by obligations. Of course, when, and how rights, particularly subjective rights, rose to prominence is contested; but it is hard to doubt they have a hold on our culture, sources, and language – at least within modern Western legal systems. However, one of the attractive things about this book is that it does not concentrate on the history of our rights-based discourse but rather on how obligations saturated the texts of pre-modern communities, and early modern societies. Moreover, Veitch wants to demonstrate that obligations are still here – doing the heavy lifting that rights cannot do. His project then is one of perspective and range …
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Stephen Bogle, Book Review: Obligations by Scott Veitch, Jurisprudence – An International Journal of Legal and Political Thought, https://doi.org/10.1080/20403313.2022.2091833. Published online 27 June.
First posted 2022-06-27 17:30:21
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