Rights for Kant/Ripstein and Nagel

A sentence from the introduction to chapter 11 really caught my attention: "For Kantians, without institutions to make, apply, and enforce law, relations between persons could never be fully rightful" (326). In this paragraph, Ripstein discusses the right of human beings as such, which is "the entitlement of every human being to live with those others with whom he or she interacts in a rightful condition" (326). 

The difference between the innate right of human beings and the right of human beings as such struck me as somewhat similar to the difference between human rights and political rights that Nagel describes in The Problem of Global Justice. The first quote above in particular reminds me of Nagel's interpretation of political rights; institutions must exist before political rights can really exist for Nagel. The way that Ripstein, and Kant, describe the right of human beings as such, though, is more compelling for me than the way Nagel describes political rights. By saying that "relations could never be fully rightful" without institutions, Ripstein implies that political rights are absolutely necessary for all people to really have full exercise of their rights. Institutions, and law, are necessary. 

But for Nagel, political rights don't seem to be quite as inherent to the conception of the person. They are associative rights, contingent on the fact that people actually are part of a society. Nagel says that it is from "a system [of strong centralized control], and from our fellow members through its institutions, that we can claim a right to democracy, equal citizenship, nondiscrimination, equality of opportunity, and the amelioration through public policy of unfairness in the distribution of social and economic goods" (127). People have political rights as soon as they are joined together under a central authority. But until that point, it is not entirely clear if people can really claim any inherent political rights. For Kant, though, it seems as if the right of human beings as such leads us to join societies. While we might not be able to exercise our political rights until we're joined under institutions and laws, we nevertheless do have a right to be human beings as such even if we do not currently live under a political system with functioning institutions.