Natural and legal rights

Natural and legal rights are two distinct categories of rights. The concept of natural rights has been debated since ancient times, and various definitions have been proposed. Natural rights usually are considered to be those rights that are universal for all humans, regardless of their political, cultural, or historical backgrounds. People are born with natural rights, which cannot be taken away or restricted by a legal system, such as a government. Legal rights are rights that were created by and exist within a legal system. These laws are not universal; they vary from place to place and may be based on particular customs or beliefs.

Background

Generally speaking, a right morally or legally entitles a person to have, get, or do something. For example, the US Constitution bestows upon the American people a number of rights in its first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights. These include the well-known First Amendment rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble peacefully, and freedom to petition the government for grievances. These rights entitle people to participate in certain activities, such as speaking freely and practicing in the religion of their choice.

In the early twentieth century, legal scholar Wesley Hohfeld identified four elements of rights, or four ways in which humans use the concept of rights:

1. Liberties. Liberties, also known as privileges, describe behaviors that people are permitted, but not required, to take. In other words, a person has the liberty to engage in a particular activity if, and only if, the person has no duty not to engage in that activity. A person has the liberty to eat a hamburger as long as he or she has no duty not to eat the hamburger. If the person has not paid for the hamburger, then he or she does have a duty not to eat it and therefore lacks the liberty to eat it.
2. Claims. While liberties involve individual behaviors, claims involve the behaviors of at least two parties. One person has a claim that another person should take a certain action if, and only if, the other person has a duty to the first to take that action. A good example of a claim is a contract between two parties. For example, Maria agrees to pay Charlie a certain amount to mow her lawn, and Charlie mows the lawn. Charlie has a claim that Maria pay him for mowing her lawn, meaning that Maria has a duty to pay Charlie for mowing her lawn.
3. Powers. Powers involve the ability to bring about change. When a person is empowered to do something, he or she has power to change his or her own or someone else's situation. For example, a manager has the power to instruct an employee to perform a certain task. In giving this instruction, the manager changes the employee's situation. The manager also takes away the employee's privilege not to complete the given task.
4. Immunities. Immunities eliminate one's power over another. When one party has the capacity to change a second party's situation, the first party has power. When the first party lacks the capacity to change the second party's situation, the second party has immunity. For example, in the United States, a newspaper has the right to print an article that criticizes the president. The newspaper is immune to any attempt the president might make to prevent the newspaper from printing the article because the president lacks the authority to make the newspaper behave in a certain way.

In addition to having several elements, rights have been divided into several categories. As societies have advanced and progressed, new categories of rights have been established and defined. Some categories of rights include human rights, which are basic rights that most societies believe all people should have, such as freedom of speech; animal rights, which are the basic rights of animals, such as the right to avoid suffering; and civil rights, which are the rights all people should have regardless of their race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, religion, or other personal characteristics.

Overview

Two very broad categories of rights are natural rights and legal rights. The main difference between the two categories is that people are born with natural rights, and legal rights are created by humans.

Natural rights are those rights that do not depend on laws, customs, or culture. They exist universally across all human societies. They are present at birth, and no government or legal system can take them away. In fact, societies often set up legal systems, including governments and laws, to protect people's natural rights and ensure that no one infringes upon them. In the United States, the "unalienable rights" that Thomas Jefferson identified in the Declaration of Independence—"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"—are considered natural rights. However, the concept of natural rights and the notion of what constitutes natural rights have changed many times throughout history.

The concept of natural law dates back to ancient times. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example, believed that legal rights, or rights created by humans, should be grounded in the law of nature. Aristotle wrote that a person had grounds to defy a man-made law if he or she believed that law contradicted the law of nature. Later, Roman philosopher Cicero wrote that the law of nature represented a higher standard than man-made law and that nature provided "common understandings" that helped people see the difference between right and wrong and honorable and dishonorable acts. Later writers, such as Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages, Spanish scholar Francisco Suárez in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius in the early seventeenth century, continued to expand upon and refine the concept of natural law and natural rights.

Two seventeenth-century English philosophers, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, often receive credit for establishing the foundation for more modern definitions of natural rights. Both Hobbes and Locke believed that natural rights were the rights humans have in the "state of nature." The state of nature is a hypothetical condition of humankind before the formation of societies and political structures. Hobbes described the state of nature as a war of all against all and emphasized people's right to self-preservation. In his view, all people have the right to everything, and they can do whatever they believe is necessary for their preservation. However, they must expect that others will take similar measures for their own self-preservation. In addition, Hobbes believed that people often mistakenly confused rights and laws and argued that the two ideas actually opposed each other. He believed that while a law represented an obligation, a right was a liberty—or a freedom from obligation.

Locke viewed the state of nature as one of peace, freedom, and equality and proposed that humans were entitled to three natural rights: life, liberty, and estate. Life referred to one's right to live. Liberty referred to one's right to do as he or she wished as long as his or her actions did not oppose the first right. Estate referred to one's right to own any property he or she produced or obtained as long as his or her right to do so did not oppose the first two rights. Locke, unlike Hobbes, believed that individuals have an obligation to respect others' property. For example, in Locke's view, a person could not take property that belonged to someone else because he or she would violate that person's right to estate in doing so. Locke also believed that humans needed some type of impartial authority to make sure that they did not trample on one another's human rights.

Throughout the eighteenth century, Locke's idea of natural rights as the right to life, liberty, and property gained traction. In 1776, for example, Thomas Jefferson included the similar phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence. In the twenty-first century, many consider these phrases the best explanations of natural rights.

Legal rights are rights that are created by and exist within a legal system. Unlike natural rights, legal rights are based on laws, customs, or beliefs, and they may vary from place to place. For example, although people who live in democratic nations have the right to vote, people who live under dictatorships do not have that right. Legal rights may be changed, repealed, or tightened by the very legal system that created them. Legal rights are bestowed upon the citizens who live within a particular legal system and can just as easily be taken away from them by that same system. At the same time, however, a legal system only works if the people it governs allow it to work. In other words, if enough people decide that a particular legal system is unfairly infringing upon their rights, they can do something to change it. For example, they may vote out certain government leaders and vote in new ones.

Hundreds of legal systems exist in modern society, each of which allows for the existence of certain rights. The two broadest categories of legal systems are religious and secular. As its name suggests, a religious legal system is based on religion. The laws in a religious system are believed to have come from a higher power and are based on the teachings and writings of prophets. Laws in religious systems instruct people not only on what to believe but also on how to act. In a secular legal system, laws are crafted by people. In secular systems, laws generally focus on how people's behavior affects others. Very few countries in the twenty-first century have legal systems based only on religion. In contrast, many countries have secular legal systems, and some have dual systems under which certain matters are dealt with using religious laws and others are handled using secular laws.

Many legal systems are based on either common law or civil law. Civil law is much older than common law, with origins dating back to ancient Rome. Common law began in England during the eleventh century CE. The main difference between civil law and common law is that civil law is codified, or set down in a legal code, and common law is based mainly on precedent, or decisions made in earlier court cases. Countries such as France and Germany have civil law systems, whereas countries such as the United States and England have common law systems.

The various legal systems that exist may use laws, customs, or beliefs to bestow rights. They also are able to determine who is eligible to hold legal rights. For example, the legal systems in most countries identify citizens of that country as legal rights holders. A visitor to a foreign country may not have the same rights that a citizen of that country has. Other entities that may have legal rights within a legal system are companies or corporations, trade unions, colleges and universities, and government departments. Debate has arisen as to whether entities that cannot comprehend law or legal systems, such as very young children, animals, or even tracts of land, should be considered legal rights holders.

Whereas natural rights are universal, legal rights typically depend on specific circumstances. Examples of legal rights include reproductive rights, patients' rights, and prisoners' rights. Reproductive rights are legal rights regarding reproduction and reproductive health. Patients' rights are the legal rights of individuals who are receiving medical care. Prisoners' rights are legal rights that belong to people in prison. A few examples of other groups whose legal rights depend on specific circumstances are consumers, students, and victims of crime.

Bibliography

Boersema, David. "Legal Rights." Encyclopedia of Global Justice, edited by Deen K. Chatterjee, vol. 2, Springer, 2011, pp. 640–2.

Campbell, Kenneth. "Legal Rights." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 4 Nov. 2017, plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-rights/#SubjRigh. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.

Chudnow, Alan. "Natural Rights." Philosophy Now, 1994, philosophynow.org/issues/10/Natural‗Rights. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.

"The Common Law and Civil Law Traditions." Robbins Collection, School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California at Berkeley, www.law.berkeley.edu/library/robbins/CommonLawCivilLawTraditions.html. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.

"The Declaration of Independence." USHistory.org, www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.

"The Declaration of Independence and Natural Rights." Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2001, www.crf-usa.org/foundations-of-our-constitution/natural-rights.html. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.

Forde, Steven. "John Locke and the Natural Law and Natural Rights Tradition." Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism, 2011, www.nlnrac.org/earlymodern/locke. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.

"Legal Systems." Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, www.law.cornell.edu/wex/legal‗systems. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.

Moltchanova, Anna. "Natural Rights." Encyclopedia of Global Justice, edited by Deen K. Chatterjee, vol. 2, Spring, 2011, pp. 748–9.

Nicgorski, Walter. "Cicero and the Natural Law." Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism, 2011, www.nlnrac.org/classical/cicero. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.

Pakulak, Michael. "Aristotle, Natural Law, and the Founders." Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism, 2011, www.nlnrac.org/classical/Aristotle. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.

Stanton, Timothy. "Natural Rights." Encyclopedia of Political Theory, edited by Mark Bevir, vol. 2, SAGE Reference, 2010, pp. 937–41.

Wenar, Leif. "Rights." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 9 Sept. 2015, plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.