The concept of subjective right: Sergio Cotta, Michel Villey and Javier Hervada

Abstract

The concept of subjective right is one of the most used in our days and has perhaps become for this reason one of the most ambiguous. It seems impossible here to retrace its history or attempt to summarise the extensive literature developed on this subject over a century ago. Sergio Cotta, Michel Villey and Javier Hervada have, in different contexts and with different interests, devoted a significant part of their studies to subjective right: Cotta places the concept in the great panorama of the history of the subject’s rights and in its antagonistic relationship with the law; Villey proposes a penetrating reconstruction of the philosophical genesis of subjective right around Ockham’s nominalism; Hervada specifies the logical moment of subjective right as a consequence of the primary existence of the right, understood as res iusta.