The recent debate over the nature of rights has been dominated by two rival theories of rights. Proponents of the Will Theory of rights hold that individual freedom, autonomy, control, or sovereignty are somehow to be fundamental to the concept of a right, while proponents of the Interest Theory argue that rights rather protect people's welfare. Participants in this debate commonly assume the existence of a single 'concept' of which both theories provide competing descriptions. The aim of this article is to show that both accounts are better understood as providing characterizations of different 'kinds' of rights.

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Nicholas Vrousalis has aimed to recast an old objection to the will theory of rights by focusing on Hillel Steiner's version of that theory. He has argued that Will Theory must either be insensitive to the (values of the) lives of the unempowerable, or be incomplete, because it has no argumentative resources within its conceptual apparatus to ascribe or justify restrictions on the amount of discretion exercised by legal officials. I show that both charges are problematic. They rely on some of Steiner's inferences which are simply unjustified because they are based on misinterpretations of the logic of Hohfeld's terminology. The problem for Vrousalis is that his critique takes for granted some of these flawed arguments. The critique is also misdirected to the extent that it assumes that the problems with Steiner's theory affect Will Theory in general.

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