Modern Era
Robert Nozick
1938–2002 · Entitlement theory
Individuals have rights, and there are things no one may do to them.
In their words
“Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them without violating these rights.”
Anarchy, State, and Utopia opened with that sentence and then argued that only a minimal state, confined to protection against force, theft and fraud, can arise without violating anyone's rights. Nozick's entitlement theory judged holdings by how they were acquired and transferred rather than by patterns of distribution, which is why the book is still the standard serious case for liberty in academic philosophy.
Why it matters for freedom
He put liberty back at the center of academic philosophy, and forced the state's defenders to answer for it.
Who they stood against
the redistributive state, in the language of the analytical philosophy that defended it