Henry Shue Basic Rights Summary

In the first chapter of “Basic Rights” Henry Shue presents his view on what rights people absolutely need in order to live a decent life and be able to enjoy other, non-basic rights. He puts the rights to security and subsistence on the top, arguing that people cannot develop in a normal manner if they are physically threatened or are not provided with basic necessities for survival. In the second chapter Shue argues against the notion, strongly perceived among the US society, that the right to security is more basic because it does not require taking any action, while the right to subsistence calls for the respective authorities to do something, thus making this right harder and more costly to implement. The author points out that the aforementioned