The Right To Hope: A New Perspective Of The Right To Have Expectations, Opportunities And Plans

Hope has been considered to be an important and constitutive aspect of the human person, not only by philosophers of all backgrounds, but also by international and national courts of several countries especially in the last decade. As an existential aspect of each person, hope has multiple manifestations in private and public life. Up until now, authors and some cases have been discussing particular manifestations of the right to hope. While in the past these courts were more aware of the hopes raised in judicial litigation and ordinary life, now the inmates’ hope of being released is the major point of debate.

This normative Article is devoted to study, not just particular manifestations, but the right to hope itself as a whole. We believe that this more comprehensive scheme will allow us to better understand the right to hope, as well as many correlated doctrines that deal with ordinary hopes, such as the doctrines of legitimate expectations and loss of a chance. For that purpose, after delimiting the essence of hope, with a subjective and objective dimension, we will analyze the possible legal justifications and scope of the right to hope, taking into account numerous American case law that explicitly mention the right to hope, international jurisprudence, the doctrine of renowned philosophers, and some theological arguments.