In The Rights of Those in Need, Anthony Joseph Marsh provides an account of how to adjudicate natural rights claims by appealing to the first principles of the natural law, as stated by Thomas Aquinas. He argues that natural law is grounded in two fundamental claims: that an action is morally permissible if and only if a virtuous agent could choose to perform it, and that the virtuous agent is primarily defined by the disposition to treat the common good as the ultimate criterion of decision-making. He combines these principles with the basic premises of Aquinas' action theory, to demonstrate the existence of positive rights under the natural law and illustrate how competing claims to receive resources should be resolved. Balancing interpretive concerns with the goal of developing an independently persuasive account, Marsh shows both that the theory's principles appear in Aquinas' texts and that they are intuitively plausible.

‘Marsh defends a view of the right of the needy to compassionate treatment which is both proportioned to available resources and conditioned on the behavior of the recipient. No single book could put an end to debate in this extremely controversial area, but this one will force thinkers on all sides to be more careful in their arguments. Definitely a worthy contribution.'

J. Budziszewski - author of Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law

‘Does someone who is in need have a right to assistance? If so, who has the duty to provide what is needed? Philosophers in the natural-law tradition often defend so-called negative rights – such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Should they endorse certain ‘positive rights,' too? If so, are ‘welfare rights' among the rights that should be endorsed? These are the important and, I must say, underexplored questions to which Anthony Marsh devotes his attention in The Rights of Those in Need.'

Robert P. George - McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University

‘Anthony Marsh contributes mightily to one of the most promising developments in ethics in recent decades, the surge in natural law in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas. With clarity and rigor, he offers original treatments of the normativity of law, virtue and the common good as well as especially innovative arguments for rights in Aquinas and for positive rights, heretofore an underdeveloped area of natural law. He concludes with a case for the right to healthcare that brings his argument into the heart of contemporary politics.'

Daniel Philpott - Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame