Legal right is distinct from the underlying appropriative tie between person and thing.

Evidence

It is necessary then to distinguish between possession and the right to possess. For the same reason I must reject any definition of the type which Proudhon gives—such as “ownership is theft”—for it begs the question. It is possible of course for private property to be the product of theft and for the holding of this property to have for its result the robbing of another. But whatever may be its origin and its results, ownership remains no less capable of description and definition in itself. The thief considers himself the owner of the money which he has stolen. Our problem then includes describing the precise relation of the thief to the stolen goods as well as the relation of the lawful owner to property “honestly acquired.” — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1365

Categorization

• DEFINE: Draws the key line between legal possession-right and the pre-legal appropriative relation that law merely sanctifies.
• XREF: Connects to the systematic backdrop of Beauvoir: the for-itself’s constitutive relation to things via appropriation, later developed in her ethics of ambiguity. — connects to: The legal form of subjective rights fits private liberties but not political obligations — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 87; Legal rights require rigid binary categories that reject graded differences — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 755; Law often codifies autonomous private practice into universal obligation rather than inventing new forms. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 4316
• SEED: Angle: ownership as a pre-legal, existential tie — what changes in a planned economy where the appropriative relation outlives the legal right.

Broader Connections

• The legal form of subjective rights fits private liberties but not political obligations #expands (0.75) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 87
• Legal rights require rigid binary categories that reject graded differences #expands (0.70) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 755