Robert Nozick's concept that individual rights create absolute moral boundaries that cannot be violated even to produce better overall outcomes. These rights function as constraints on action rather than goals to be maximized.
Coined by Robert Nozick in 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia' (1974), combining 'side' (indicating a boundary) and 'constraints' from Latin 'constringere' (to bind together). The term was created to distinguish rights-based ethics from utilitarian goal-seeking.
Side-constraints explain why we can't harvest organs from one healthy person to save five dying patients - individual rights create 'no-go zones' that utilitarian calculations can't override! It's the difference between treating rights as goals versus treating them as absolute boundaries.
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