Entitlements

Someone is entitled to something if a relevant institution has rules assigning that kind of thing to someone in the position of the person who is claimed to be entitled to that thing, given his or her position the word entitlement can refer either to the thing to which he or she is entitled or to the fact of that person's being entitled to it. The notion of entitlement, then, is strongly rule governed. Often these are legal rules. It is disputed whether, but not obviously impossible that, one can be entitled by moral, as opposed to strictly legal, rules. In any case, clubs, businesses, and all sorts of other organizations and informal arrangements among people have rules that specify entitlements or what amount to entitlements.

The idea is perhaps best explained by comparing it especially with the idea of desert, and both need to be considered in relation to the more general topic of distributive justice. Plato long ago considered the question of whether justice is “giving every man his due” (and rejected it). Due is not far removed from deserve, certainly, and sometimes it is not far removed from entitlement either. But the idea of entitlement does have a fairly distinctive meaning, where it is not the same as either of these other ideas.

Both desert and entitlement are primarily concerned with relations among individuals. Jones may deserve something of Smith but of no one else in the world Robinson may be entitled to something from Larson that no one else is. More interestingly, Robinson may be entitled to it even though he doesn't deserve it—and vice versa. In a classic kind of case, Robinson might be the heir in his father's will, despite being a ne'er-do-well. Jones may have deserved the prize but not be entitled to it. What's the difference?

Both entitlement and desert are usually normative or evaluative ideas, but they work in divergent ways. When someone deserves something, we think especially of there being some kind of valuable quality in that individual, such that the appropriate response on the part of someone or other, or perhaps everyone, is to give the person that thing. Judges at a dance competition, say, are there to see which of the competitors danced the best. Points might be awarded for gracefulness, speed, and overall artistic merit, for example, the idea being to track these virtues well enough to determine who should get the prize, or prizes. If Competitor A [Page 721]is superior to Competitor B in these respects, then A is more deserving than B. Characteristically, though not necessarily always, we deserve something by virtue of something we have done. (We could be claimed to be deserving on the basis of possession of some natural trait too—e.g., intelligence or beauty.)

Entitlement works very differently. The background to entitlement is, broadly speaking, institutional, and the institutions in question are framed by rules, specifying which persons in which positions are to have this or that. Go back to our dance competition, and suppose that the judges conclude that Couple X should get the prize. Now suppose that much of the audience on hand thinks otherwise. Well, the rules of the competition specify that the judges decide who gets it—not the audience. Perhaps we would side with the audience if we had seen the show, but there it is—the judges have decided, and the couple they specify is entitled to the prize. Or suppose there is an election, and Ms. Graf is found to have more votes than Mr. Hawley. Then she is entitled to the office. She may not deserve it, in the view of many, and perhaps those people are right. Still, there was the electoral result, and given that it is such, that settles the question of who occupies the office: Ms. Graf does.

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