Legal Methods Assignment in India

Q1. WHAT IS HOHFELD’S ANALYSIS?

The Hohfeldian analysis enhances legal reasoning by allowing one to deduce one legal
concept from another. Professor Hohfeld identified eight basic jural relations by dividing
classifying the legal realtions that were earlier classified only a ‘rights’ and ‘duties’. 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).
JURAL OPPOSITES:
RIGHT PRIVELEGE POWER IMMUNITY
NO RIGHT DUTY DISABILITY LIABILITY

JURAL COORELATIVES:
RIGHT PRIVELEGE POWER IMMUNITY
DUTY NO RGHT LIABILITY DISABILITY

EXPLANATION OF RELATIONS:
Hohfeld’s relations can be best understood through examples. Following are the different
examples of different legal relations. Hohfeld explained the correlations as “if X has a right
against Y that he shall stay off the formers (X) land, the correlative is that Y is under a duty
toward X to stay off his place”. Thus, a right is enjoyed by an individual as against another
individual is that the second shall do or refrain from doing something for the first. Thus X has
a right against Y with regard to act A, if and only if Y has a duty to X with regard to act A.
Hohfeld has also explained "no-right" and "privilege” concepts as well. They are,
respectively, the opposites of "right" and "duty." The terms "privilege" and "no-right" are
also correlatives. X has a privilege against Y with regard to act A, if and only if Y has a no-
right against X with regard to A. A “liability” is the correlative of a “power”. A person X is
under a liability, if there is an act another person can perform that will affect the legal
relations of X. “Disabilities” and “immunities” are the opposites of “powers” and
“liabilities”. If X does not have a power with regard to individual Y, then X is under a
disability with regard to Y. Similarly, if Y is not under a liability with regard to X, then Y has
an immunity with regard to X. Whereas “Disabilities” and “immunities” are also correlatives
of each other. If X has a disability with regard to Y, that is, X has no power to affect Y's legal
relations, then Y is immune from having his or her legal relations affected by X. Similarly, if
Y is immune with regard to X, then X is under a disability with regard to Y. If rights and
duties must always be paired, then no-rights and privileges must also always be paired. Thus,
an individual has a no-right against another individual with regard to a particular act if and
only if that individual does not have a right against the second individual with regard to that
act. Similarly, an individual has a privilege against a second individual with regard to a
particular act if and only if the individual does not have a duty toward the second individual
with regard to that act.

Q2. WHERE DOES THE HOHFELD’S ANALYSIS FALL SHORT?

The flaw in the Hohfeld’s analysis is that the same conclusion can be reached through two
ways. For example, having a privilege does not make it clear that you had duty to perform
something or no duty to perform something. This is called the Squares of Opposition.

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 perform well in exams; no students perform well in exams; some
students perform well in exams; some students do not perform well in exams. 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 perform well in
exams, then it is true that some students perform well in exams; similarly, if no students
perform well in exams, then it is true that some students do not perform well in exams.
Obviously the entailment does not work in the other direction. If you find some students who
perform well in exams, it does not follow as a matter of logic that all students perform well in
exmas. 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 do not perform well in exams, then it is false that all students perform well in exams;
similarly, if some students perform well in exams, then it is false that no students perform
well in exams.

Thus to resolve this issue the square of opposition collapses into a triangle of possibilities.

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 perform well in exams’, then it will be the case either that (B) ‘no students
perform well in exams’ or that (C) ‘some students perform well in exams and some don’t’.
There is not a mere negation of A. (And similarly for B and C.)

Q3. Analyze Right To Information using the Hohfeldian analysis.

When we analyze the right to information using the hohfeldian analysis, we can observe the
following. If a person has a right to information against the government, then the government
has a duty to provide that information to the people. It also follows that it cannot be said that
the people have ‘no-right’ to information. The people also have the power to demand
information from the government, which means that the government has a liability to provide
that information to the people.