LEGAL METHODS ASSIGNMENT FOR CA II

Submitted by- Submitted to-

Charu Sharma Anirudh Panicker
UG SEM I Faculty of Law
Section- A National Law University, Jodhpur
1) What is Hohfeldian Analysis?
Hohfeldian Analysis is a concept of analyzing legal rights in a broader sense, given by
Professor Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld.

Professor Hohfeld has propounded that the different meanings of the term right are often
conflated in a single sentence. In any given sentence, the usage is switched several times.
This lack of precision in the language subsequently indicates a lack of precision in thought
and the conclusions that are derived in turn. His efforts to facilitate reasoning led him to
break the meaning of rights into eight unique concepts. These terms are defined with
respect to one another to eliminate the presence of any ambiguity. He defined these eight
basic jural relations to clarify legal thinking and understanding, Hohfeld divided the eight
into pairs which cannot exist together (opposites), and those which must exist together
(correlatives).
Four pairs of opposites and correlatives are said to exist as illustrated below:

Jural Opposites comprise of the following:

1. Right/No-Right
2. Privilege/Duty
3. Power/Disability
4. Immunity/Liability

Jural Correlatives are mainly constituted by:

1. Right/Duty
2. Privilege (Liberty)/No-Right
3. Power/Liability
4. Immunity/Disability

Right and Duty- If X has a right against Y that he shall stay off the former's land, the
correlative (and equivalent) is that Y is under a duty toward X to stay off the place.

‘Duty’ and ‘right’ are correlative terms. Rights in the strict sense can, therefore, be held to
be benefits, which are derived from duties imposed upon others i.e., right-claims are
necessarily the grounds of other people's legal duties toward the right-holder.

Privilege and No-Right- The correlative of X's privilege of entering himself is manifestly
Y's "no-right" that X shall not enter. The term ‘no-right’ basically implies that a certain
person does not have a right against another individual in a particular respect. The evolution
of this term is said to have taken place in a negative context. So, if X has the privilege to
undertake a particular act, it means that Y has no-right to say that the act will not be done.

Privilege and Duty- In the example last put, whereas X has a right or claim that Y, the
other man, should stay off the land, he himself has the privilege of entering on the land; or,
in equivalent words, X does not have a duty to stay off. The privilege of entering is the
negation of a duty to stay off. When it is said that a given privilege is the mere negation of
a duty, what is meant, of course, is a duty having a content or tenor precisely opposite to
that of the privilege in question.
The primary difference between liberty and rights in strict sense is that things I may do for
myself are classified as liberty whereas things which others ought to do in my respect are
classified as rights in strict sense.

Power and Liability- A change in a given legal relation may result (1) from some
superadded fact or group of facts not under the volitional control of a human being (or
human beings); or (2) from some superadded fact or group of facts which are under the
volitional control of one or more human beings. As regards the second class of cases, the
person (or persons) whose volitional control is paramount may be said to have the (legal)
power to effect the particular change of legal relations that is involved in the problem.

If one possesses power, one possesses the ability to change by one’s own will, the
liabilities, duties, rights and any other relations of oneself or with respect to other
individuals.

Liability of an individual arises when power is vested in another. It can broadly be defined
as the alteration of a person’s legal rights by the person who exercises power.

In McNeer v. McNeer, Justice Magruder balanced the conceptions of power and liability
as follows:
"So long as she lived, however, his interest in her land lacked those elements of property,
such as power of disposition and liability to sale on execution which had formerly given it
the character of a vested estate."

Immunity and Disability- Immunity grants an exception to change any legal relations.
The right of an individual to be tried by members of society of equal standing creates an
exclusion from being tried by a jury. Immunity implies a complete lack of liability

Disability, the correlative of immunity, is better known as inability and signifies the
absence of power. The legal maxim ‘Nemo dat quod non habet’ which means that no person
can transfer a better title in property than what is possessed by oneself, is an expression of
disability.
 The vertical arrows here indicate the relationship of "correlatives", so that a right (claim)
in A against B implies a duty in B towards A and vice versa. The diagonal arrows couple
what Hohfeld called "opposites", where the presence of one in A means the absence of the
other in A. Thus, a no-right in A means the absence of a right (claim) in A.

2) Where does the Analysis fall short?

Hohfeldian analysis explains concepts using the square of opposition. When we use a
negation to indicate the absence of something, we often fail to provide the full picture.
Further questions may need to be asked to ascertain.

For example, whether the person who does not have a driving license has never applied
for one or has been disqualified for a drink-driving offence. Answers to such further
questions provide us with the real significance of the negation, and the practical
implications will vary depending upon the particular answer given. The square of
opposition is constructed by an interplay of negations in a way which brings the analysis
to a halt before the further question is asked.

When hohfeld explains something with the negation of other he doesn’t resolve some
ambiguities. It explains privilege as the absence of a claim by other person and also defines
privilege as negation of duty. So according to Hohfeld there is no positive privilege.
Another challenge to the scheme is that the hohfeldian scheme is based on the opposition
of squares in which some component does not have independent existence of itself meaning
here that one information may not clearly explain the presence of one or the negation of
other.
The fallacy of the hohfeldian scheme can be corrected by representing this scheme in
triangle of possibilities. The development of the triangle of possibilities allows
for greater clarification, than the square of opposition provides, in the analysis of
legal relations.

The square uses four propositions which may be created from applying a predicate
to a subject in the following ways: ‘all S are P’; ‘no S are P’; ‘some S are
P’; ‘some S are not P’. For example: all students are hard working; no students
 are hard working; some students are hard working; some students are not hard
working. It is worth pausing on the logical status of the last two propositions before
we see how they fit into the square. Each is entailed by one of the first two propositions:
if all students are hard working then it is true that some students are hard
working; similarly, if no students are hard working9 then it is true that some students
are not hard working. Obviously the entailment does not work in the other direction.
If you find some students who are hard working, it does not follow as a matter of
logic that all students are hard working. The other thing to say about the last two
propositions (‘some S are P’; ‘some S are not P’) is that each contradicts the proposition
in the first pair which it is not entailed by: if some students are not hard working
then it is false that all students are hard working; similarly, if some students
are hard working then it is false that no students are hard working.

The triangle of possibilities does not simply represent a more advanced stage
analytically than the square of opposition. It also accurately represents the process
of negation between the three propositions in a manner more complete than that
provided by the square of opposition. Negate the proposition represented by any
point on the triangle and two possibilities open up represented by the points reached
by travelling along either side of the triangle from the point we started with. For
example, if we negate the proposition (A) ‘all students are hard working’, then it
will be the case either that (B) ‘no students are hard working’ or that (C) ‘some
students are hard working and some are not’. There is not a mere negation of A.
(And similarly for B and C.)

3) Right to Information act with hohfeldian approach?

The RTI Act, 2005, can be explained by the Hohfeldian analysis. As the citizens now have a
right to demand any piece of information from the concerned government department, the
government has a corresponding duty to give them access to the same within 30 days. There
can also be no claim on this right. As there exists a liberty for the citizens to access the
information, there doesn’t exist a duty to not to access the information by the citizens.
The state under RTI is liable and empowered to release the concerned pieces of information in
response to the exercise of the citizens power to ask for the information. Therefore, as the state
has the liability, it does not have the immunity to not to release the information. As the citizens
have the power to demand the information, they are not disabled to not ask for the information.