Matthew Kramer on 'Interest' v 'Will' theories of Rights

Rights are things you have which allow you to do certain other things even if they are bad for you or bad for other people. Of course, for rights to be effective, it may be necessary that there is an 'obligation holder' who steps in to ensure you get to do what you want in accordance with your rights. 

Rights may be held by non-human entities provided there is a prior recognition of what those rights entail. This does not mean there has to be any agreement of whether the right is being exercised volitionally or beneficially. Either the thing exists in law or it doesn't. 

Is there any point going much beyond this sort of 'common sense' pronouncement? No. It would be like a General Equilibrium theory of Econ trying to take over Biology and Physics and the 'hard' problem of Consciousness. There is no point shitting above your arsehole if people think of you as basically just a jumped up clerk of some sort. 

Consider the following from Matthew Kramer

Why stipulate anything to do with 'benefit'? Who knows what will be or won't be beneficial? Either the right exists in the sense that there is an obligation holder under a viculum juris, or, for jurisprudence there is nothing justiciable.

 Kramer draws a distinction between 'Interest' and 'Will' theories.

What about a Hindu deity- who has won a recent court case in India which has resulted in a Temple for him being built?
How do we know that the Deity benefits from a Temple? How do we know, miserable mortals that we are, that we do not lose treasure in heaven any time the police intervene to secure us from rape and torture at the hands of psychopaths?

What is the point of having rights if fools can prose over whether they are beneficial or harmful to us?

It seems both the 'Will' and the 'Interest' theory agree that rights exist where there is an obligation holder but the 'Interest' theory drags in considerations of what is or isn't 'beneficial'.

So, the Will theory is superior. The following sounds perfectly reasonable-

The problem, of course, as Kramer points out, is that we don't want all the onus of proceeding against a criminal to lie with his victim. We want to be able to arrest him and get him to feel very sorry for himself without any delay or 'by your leave'.
But, this isn't really a big problem. We say that an offense has been committed against the Crown or the Realm or whatever.
The problem with both the 'Will' and the 'Interest' view is that there is an emphasis on either 'benefit' or 'agency'. Yet it may be beneficial to 'sleep on one's rights' because sleep is beneficial! The scandal both face is that there's always someone who appears to be the right's holder but who can' possibly do anything 'beneficial' or involving 'agency' because of the facts of the case. But this scandal disappears when we consider that Jurisprudence is merely a service industry. Interest and Agency protect themselves in myriad ways or else have a nice comfy nap or get drunk and bump uglies with some other silly abstraction.

Kramer gives the example of Gopal Sreenivasan's hybrid theory as one which quickly yields silliness. But why assume 'Mechanism Design' is wholly justiciable? How could it be so, ab ovo? Like Econ, or Philosophy, or Psychology, Jurisprudence can't claim to be a complete theory of everything in the Social Configuration space. Indeed, that space is of far greater complexity and lacks commutativity with respect to its corresponding Physical configuration space.

Rights are hedges and may have Income effects. They are worth having only because of Knightian Uncertainty. It is foolish to think they are related to essentially contested notions such as Interest or Agency though, no doubt, these concepts may be analytically useful.