Levinson, D. J. (1999). Rights essentialism and remedial equilibration. Columbia Law Review, 99(4), 857. doi:10.2307/1123480.
Not read. The summary is drawn from what the work is standardly cited for and from the exchange’s description of it. A reading should check it first.
Why this is here
A8: “If a person retains a formal right but the institutional mechanisms for exercising it are systematically unavailable, has the relevant freedom persisted?” It bears on CLAIM-352’s opportunity aspect of freedom and on TERM-085.
Note of 2026-10-29: anticipated by Fiss, now held
Fiss’s “The forms of justice” (1979), LIT-1600, read in NOTE-1364, states the thesis this work is standardly cited for, twenty years before it. Fiss holds that rights and remedies “jointly constitute the meaning of the public value”, and that because a structural remedy depends on actors outside the court, “no judge is likely to decree more than he thinks he has the power to accomplish … He will tailor the right to fit the remedy” (pp. 50–58). That is remedial equilibration under another name. Whether Levinson cites Fiss, and how his account differs, is for a reading of this work, which is still Unfetched. The status is unchanged.