In The Second Bill of Rights (2004), Cass Sunstein, distinguished professor of jurisprudence at the University of Chicago, argues that economic security should be a governmentally protected right with the same status as the right to own property and speak one’s mind. Sunstein’s argument rests on a faulty understanding of the distinction between positive rights, which obligate individuals to do something, and negative rights, which obligate them to not do something.

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