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Abstract
When and why should a "right to" include a "right not to"? If a person has a right to engage in an activity or to receive a procedural protection, under what circumstances should he or she also have a right not to engage in that activity or to refuse that process? The basic project of this Article is to show why these questions are important in American constitutional law, to explore how doctrine and scholarship have implicitly and sometimes awkwardly dealt with them, and to suggest normative frameworks with which they can be answered. When and why should a "right to" include a "right not to"? If a person has a right to engage in an activity or to receive a procedural protection, under what circumstances should he or she also have a right not to engage in that activity or to refuse that process? The basic project of this Article is to show why these questions are important in American constitutional law, to explore how doctrine and scholarship have implicitly and sometimes awkwardly dealt with them, and to suggest normative frameworks with which they can be answered.