Abstract: The chapter starts by establishing the need for a substantive account of human rights—one with enough content to settle what rights exist and what their content is. Human rights, it proposes, have their ground in personhood (in normative agency), in certain practicalities, and in equal respect. It goes on to suggest a framework for resolving conflict between two human rights or a human right and welfare, and to identify various restrictions on such trade-offs.

Keywords: human rights, normative agency, welfare,