Right" redirects here.

For other uses, seen Right (disambiguatio

n)
 Rights

Theoretical distinctions

 Claim rights and liberty rights

 Individual and group rights
 Natural rights and legal rights
 Negative and positive rights

Human rights
 Civil and political
 Economic, social and cultural
 Three generations

Rights by beneficiary
 Accused
 Animals
 Autistic
 Children
 Consumers
 Creditors
 Deaf
 Disabled
 Elders
 Family
 Farmers
 Fetuses
 Humans
 Indigenous
 Intersex
 Kings
 LGBT
 Transgender
 Men
 Minorities
 Parents
 Fathers
 Mothers
 Patients
 Peasants
 Plants
 Prisoners
Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that
is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of
people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convention,
or ethical theory.[1] Rights are an important concept in law and ethics,
especially theories of justice and deontology.

The history of social conflicts has often involved attempts to define and
redefine rights. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "rights
structure the form of governments, the content of laws, and the shape
of morality as it is currently perceived".[1]

Types of rights
[edit]
Natural versus legal
[edit]

According to some views, certain rights derive

from deities or nature.
Main article: Natural and legal rights

 Natural rights are rights which are "natural" in the sense of "not
artificial, not man-made", as in rights deriving from human nature or from
the edicts of a god. They are universal; that is, they apply to all people,
and do not derive from the laws of any specific society. They exist
necessarily, inhere in every individual, and cannot be taken away. For
example, it has been argued that humans have a natural right to life.
These are sometimes called moral rights or inalienable rights.
 Legal rights, in contrast, are based on a society's customs,
laws, statutes or actions by legislatures. An example of a legal right is
the right to vote of citizens. Citizenship, itself, is often considered as the
basis for having legal rights, and has been defined as the "right to have
rights". Legal rights are sometimes called civil rights or statutory
rights and are culturally and politically relative since they depend on a
specific societal context to have meaning.
Some thinkers see rights in only one sense while others accept that both
senses have a measure of validity. There has been considerable
philosophical debate about these senses throughout history. For
example, Jeremy Bentham believed that legal rights were the essence of
rights, and he denied the existence of natural rights, [2] whereas Thomas
Aquinas held that rights purported by positive law but not grounded
in natural law were not properly rights at all, but only a facade or pretense of
rights.

Claim versus liberty

[edit]
Main article: Claim rights and liberty rights

 A claim right is a right which entails that another person has a duty to
the right-holder. Somebody else must do or refrain from doing something
to or for the claim holder, such as perform a service or supply a product
for him or her; that is, he or she has a claim to that service or product
(another term is thing in action).[3] In logic, this idea can be expressed as:
"Person A has a claim that person B do something if and only if B has a
duty to A to do that something." Every claim-right entails that some other
duty-bearer must do some duty for the claim to be satisfied. This duty can
be to act or to refrain from acting. For example, many jurisdictions
recognize broad claim rights to things like "life, liberty, and property";
these rights impose an obligation upon others not to assault or restrain a
person, or use their property, without the claim-holder's permission.
Likewise, in jurisdictions where social welfare services are guaranteed,
citizens have legal claim rights to be provided with those services.
 A liberty right or privilege, in contrast, is simply a freedom or
permission for the right-holder to do something, and there are no
obligations on other parties to do or not do anything. [3] This can be
expressed in logic as: "Person A has a privilege to do something if and
only if A has no duty not to do that something." For example, if a person
has a legal liberty right to free speech, that merely means that it is not
legally forbidden for them to speak freely: it does not mean that anyone
has to help enable their speech, or to listen to their speech; or even, per
se, refrain from stopping them from speaking, though other rights, such
as the claim right to be free from assault, may severely limit what others
can do to stop them.
Liberty rights and claim rights are the inverse of one another: a person has a
liberty right permitting him to do something only if there is no other person
who has a claim right forbidding him from doing so. Likewise, if a person has
a claim right against someone else, then that other person's liberty is
limited. For example, a person has a liberty right to walk down a sidewalk
and can decide freely whether or not to do so, since there is no obligation
either to do so or to refrain from doing so. But pedestrians may have an
obligation not to walk on certain lands, such as other people's private
property, to which those other people have a claim right. So a
person's liberty right of walking extends precisely to the point where
another's claim right limits his or her freedom.

Positive versus negative

[edit]
Main article: Negative and positive rights
In one sense, a right is a permission to do something or an entitlement to a
specific service or treatment from others, and these rights have been
called positive rights. However, in another sense, rights may allow or require
inaction, and these are called negative rights; they permit or require doing
nothing. For example, in some countries, e.g. the United States, citizens
have the positive right to vote and they have the negative right to not vote;
people can choose not to vote in a given election without punishment. In
other countries, e.g. Australia, however, citizens have a positive right to vote
but they do not have a negative right to not vote, since voting is compulsory.
Accordingly:

 Positive rights are permissions to do things, or entitlements to be done

unto. One example of a positive right is the purported "right to welfare". [4]
 Negative rights are permissions not to do things, or entitlements to be
left alone. Often the distinction is invoked by libertarians who think of
a negative right as an entitlement to non-interference such as a right
against being assaulted.[4]
Though similarly named, positive and negative rights should not be confused
with active rights (which encompass "privileges" and "powers") and passive
rights (which encompass "claims" and "immunities").

Individual versus group

[edit]
Main article: Individual and group rights
This section is written like a personal reflection,
personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a
Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original
argument about a topic. Please help improve it by rewriting it
in an encyclopedic style. (February 2024) (Learn how and when
to remove this message)

 Individual rights are rights held by individual people regardless of their

group membership or lack thereof.
 Do groups have rights? Some argue that when
soldiers bond in combat, the group becomes like an organism in itself and
has rights which trump the rights of any individual soldier.

 Group rights, including the rights of nations, have been argued to exist
when a group is seen as more than a mere composite or assembly of
separate individuals but an entity in its own right. In other words, it is
possible to see a group as a distinct being in and of itself; it is akin to an
enlarged individual, a corporate body, which has a distinct will and power
of action and can be thought of as having rights. Rights of nations,
including a national right to self-determination have been argued for,
[5]
and a platoon of soldiers in combat can be thought of as a distinct
group, since individual members are willing to risk their lives for the
survival of the group, and therefore the group can be conceived as having
a "right" which is superior to that of any individual member; for example,
a soldier who disobeys an officer can be punished, perhaps even killed,
for a breach of obedience. But there is another sense of group rights in
which people who are members of a group can be thought of as having
specific individual rights because of their membership in a group. In this
sense, the set of rights which individuals-as-group-members have is
expanded because of their membership in a group. For example, workers
who are members of a group such as a labor union can be thought of as
having expanded individual rights because of their membership in the
labor union, such as the rights to specific working conditions or wages.
[citation needed]

There can be tension between individual and group rights. A classic instance
in which group and individual rights clash is conflicts between unions and
their members. For example, individual members of a union may wish a
wage higher than the union-negotiated wage, but are prevented from
making further requests; in a so-called closed shop which has a union
security agreement, only the union has a right to decide matters for the
individual union members such as wage rates. So, do the supposed
"individual rights" of the workers prevail about the proper wage? Or do the
"group rights" of the union regarding the proper wage prevail? [citation needed]

The Austrian School of Economics holds that only individuals think, feel, and
act whether or not members of any abstract group. The society should thus
according to economists of the school be analyzed starting from the
individual. This methodology is called methodological individualism and is
used by the economists to justify individual rights.[citation needed] Similarly, the
author Ayn Rand argued that only individuals have rights, according to her
philosophy known as Objectivism.[6] However, others have argued that there
are situations in which a group of persons is thought to have rights, or group
rights.

Other senses
[edit]
This section is written like a personal reflection,
personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a
Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original
argument about a topic. Please help improve it by rewriting it
in an encyclopedic style. (February 2024) (Learn how and when
to remove this message)

Other distinctions between rights draw more on historical association

or family resemblance than on precise philosophical distinctions. These
include the distinction between civil and political rights and economic,
social and cultural rights, between which the articles of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights are often divided. Another conception of rights
groups them into three generations. These distinctions have much overlap
with that between negative and positive rights, as well as between individual
rights and group rights, but these groupings are not entirely coextensive.

Politics
[edit]

Police officers in the United States are required to

read the Miranda warning between making an arrest and beginning an
interrogation. The warning informs the person arrested that they have rights
included in the Fifth Amendment. Failure to "read Miranda" disqualifies
evidence obtained primarily in the questioning.
Rights are often included in the foundational questions that governments
and politics have been designed to deal with. Often the development of
these socio-political institutions have formed a dialectical relationship with
rights.[citation needed]
Rights about particular issues, or the rights of particular groups, are often
areas of special concern. Often these concerns arise when rights come into
conflict with other legal or moral issues, sometimes even other rights. Issues
of concern have historically included Indigenous rights, labor rights, LGBTQ
rights, reproductive rights, disability rights, patient rights and prisoners'
rights. With increasing monitoring and the information society, information
rights, such as the right to privacy are becoming more important.[citation needed]

Some examples of groups whose rights are of particular concern

include animals,[7] and amongst humans, groups such
as children[8] and youth, parents (both mothers and fathers),
and men and women.[9]

Accordingly, politics plays an important role in developing or recognizing the

above rights, and the discussion about which behaviors are included as
"rights" is an ongoing political topic of importance. The concept of rights
varies with political orientation. Positive rights such as a "right to medical
care" are emphasized more often by left-leaning thinkers, while right-leaning
thinkers place more emphasis on negative rights such as the "right to a fair
trial".[citation needed]

Further, the term equality which is often bound up with the meaning of
"rights" often depends on one's political orientation. Conservatives and right-
wing libertarians and advocates of free markets often identify equality
with equality of opportunity, and want what they perceive as equal and fair
rules in the process of making things, while agreeing that sometimes these
fair rules lead to unequal outcomes. In contrast, socialists see the power
imbalance of employer-employee relationships in capitalism as a cause of
inequality and often see unequal outcomes as a hindrance to equality of
opportunity. They tend to identify equality of outcome as a sign of equality
and therefore think that people have a right to portions of necessities such
as health care or economic assistance or housing that align with their needs.
[10][better source needed]

Philosophy
[edit]

In philosophy, meta-ethics is the branch of

ethics that seeks to understand the nature of
ethical properties, statements, attitudes, and
judgments. Meta-ethics is one of the three
branches of ethics generally recognized
by philosophers, the others being normative
ethics and applied ethics.
While normative ethics addresses such questions as "What should one do?",
thus endorsing some ethical evaluations and rejecting others, meta-ethics
addresses questions such as "What is goodness?" and "How can we tell what
is good from what is bad?", seeking to understand the nature of ethical
properties and evaluations.

Rights ethics is an answer to the meta-ethical question of what normative

ethics is concerned with (meta-ethics also includes a group of questions
about how ethics comes to be known, true, etc. which is not directly
addressed by rights ethics). Rights ethics holds that normative ethics is
concerned with rights. Alternative meta-ethical theories are that ethics is
concerned with one of the following:

 Duties (deontology)
 Value (axiology)
 Virtue (virtue ethics)
 Consequences (consequentialism, e.g. utilitarianism)
Rights ethics has had considerable influence on political and social thinking.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights gives some concrete examples of
widely accepted rights.

Criticism
[edit]
Some philosophers have criticised some rights as ontologically dubious
entities.[citation needed]

History
[edit]
See also: History of human rights

Magna Carta or "The Great Charter" was one of

England's first documents containing commitments by a king to his people to
respect certain legal rights. It reduced the power of the monarch.
 The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen in 1789 in France
The specific enumeration of rights has differed greatly in different periods of
history. In many cases, the system of rights promulgated by one group has
come into sharp and bitter conflict with that of other groups. In the political
sphere, a place in which rights have historically been an important issue,
constitutional provisions of various states sometimes address the question of
who has what legal rights.

Historically, many notions of rights were authoritarian and hierarchical, with

different people granted different rights, and some having more rights than
others. For instance, the right of a father to be respected by his son did not
indicate a right of the son to receive something in return for that respect;
and the divine right of kings, which permitted absolute power over subjects,
did not leave much possibility for many rights for the subjects themselves. [11]

In contrast, modern conceptions of rights have often

emphasized liberty and equality as among the most important aspects of
rights, as was evident in the American and French revolutions.

Important documents in the political history of rights include:

 The Persian Empire of ancient Iran established unprecedented principles

of human rights in the 6th century BC under Cyrus the Great. After his
conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, the king issued the Cyrus cylinder,
discovered in 1879 and seen by some today as the first human rights
document.[12][13][14]
 The Constitution of Medina (622 AD; Arabia) instituted a number of rights
for the Muslim, Jewish, camp followers and "believers" of Medina. [15]
 Magna Carta (1215; England) required the King of England to renounce
certain rights and respect certain legal procedures, and to accept that the
 will of the king could be bound by law, after King John promised his
barons he would follow the "law of the land". While Magna Carta was
originally a set of rules that the king had to follow, and mainly protected
the property of aristocratic landowners, today it is seen as the basis of
certain rights for ordinary people, such as the right of due process. [16]
 The Declaration of Arbroath (1320; Scotland) established the right of the
people to choose a head of state (see popular sovereignty).
 The Henrician Articles (1573; Poland-Lithuania) or King Henry's Articles
were a permanent contract that stated the fundamental principles of
governance and constitutional law in the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, including the rights of the nobility to elect the king, to
meet in parliament whose approval was required to levy taxes and
declare war or peace, to religious liberty and the right to rebel in case the
king transgressed against the laws of the republic or the rights of the
nobility.
 The Bill of Rights (1689; England) declared that Englishmen, as embodied
by Parliament, possess certain civil and political rights; the Claim of
Right (1689; Scotland) was similar but distinct.
 The Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) by George Mason declared the
inherent natural rights and separation of powers.
 The United States Declaration of Independence (1776) succinctly defined
the rights of man as including, but not limited to, "Life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness" which later influenced "liberté, égalité, fraternité"
(liberty, equality, fraternity) in France.[17] The phrase can also be found in
Chapter III, Article 13 of the 1947 Constitution of Japan,[18][non-primary source
needed]
and in President Ho Chi Minh's 1945 declaration of independence of
the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.[19][non-primary source needed] An alternative phrase
"life, liberty and property", is found in the Declaration of Colonial Rights, a
resolution of the First Continental Congress. Also, Article 3 of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads, "Everyone has the right
to life, liberty and security of person".
 The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789; France),
one of the fundamental documents of the French Revolution, defined a
set of individual rights and collective rights of the people.
 The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1785; United States), written
by Thomas Jefferson in 1779, was a document that asserted the right of
man to form a personal relationship with God free from interference by
the state.
 The United States Bill of Rights (1789–1791; United States), the first ten
amendments of the United States Constitution specified rights of
individuals in which government could not interfere, including the rights
of free assembly, freedom of religion, trial by jury, and the right to keep
and bear arms.
 The Constitution of Poland-Lithuania (1791; Poland-Lithuania) was the first
constitution in Europe, and second in the world. It built upon previous
 Polish law documents such as the Henrician Articles, as well as the
US constitution, and it too, specified many rights.
 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) is an overarching set of
standards by which governments, organisations and individuals would
measure their behaviour towards each other. [citation needed] The preamble
declares that the "...recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal
and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the
foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..."
 The European Convention on Human Rights (1950; Europe) was adopted
under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect human rights and
fundamental freedoms.
 The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), a follow-up
to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, concerns civil and political
rights.
 The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights (1966), another follow-up to the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, concerns economic, social and cultural rights.
 The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982; Canada) was
created to protect the rights of Canadian citizens from actions and
policies of all levels of government.[20][non-primary source needed]
 The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000) is one of
the most recent proposed legal instruments concerning human rights.
See also
[edit]

 Outline of rights

 Animal rights
 Contractual rights
 Constitutionalism
 Deed
 Droit
 Equal rights (disambiguation), various meanings
 Exclusive rights
 Freedom of religion
 Freedom of speech
 Freedom of the press
 History of citizenship
 Jurisprudence
 Prerogative
 Right to food
 Right to housing
 Right to property
 Right to water
 Right to an adequate standard of living
 Right to health
 Right to social security
 Rule according to higher law
 Social contract
Organisations:

 Amnesty International
 Human Rights Watch
 United States Commission on Civil Rights

References
[edit]

1. ^ Jump up to:a b Wenar, Leif (July 9, 2007). "Rights". Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy. Stanford University. Retrieved 2009-12-21. Rights dominate most
modern understandings of what actions are proper and which institutions are
just. Rights structure the forms of our governments, the contents of our laws,
and the shape of morality as we perceive it. To accept a set of rights is to
approve a distribution of freedom and authority, and so to endorse a certain
view of what may, must, and must not be done.
2. ^ Harrison, Ross (1995). "Jeremy Bentham". In Honderich, Ted (ed.). The
Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford University Press. pp. 85–88.
Archived from the original on 2017-01-29. Retrieved 2012-12-01. Also
see Sweet, William (11 April 2001). "Jeremy Bentham". The Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 7 January 2011.
3. ^ Jump up to:a b "Human Rights | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy".
Retrieved 2020-11-14.
4. ^ Jump up to:a b Wenar, Leif (July 9, 2007). "Rights". Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. Stanford University. Retrieved 2009-12-21. A distinction between
negative and positive rights is popular among some normative theorists,
especially those with a bent toward libertarianism. The holder of a negative
right is entitled to non-interference, while the holder of a positive right is
entitled to provision of some good or service. A right against assault is a
classic example of a negative right, while a right to welfare assistance is a
prototypical positive right.
5. ^ Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis, section 15, published 30
December 1987, accessed 29 July 2023
6. ^ Ayn Rand (2009-12-18). "The Virtue of Selfishness: Individual Rights". The
Ayn Rand Lexicon. Retrieved 2009-12-18. Individual rights are not subject to
a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority;
the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from
oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the
individual). see page 104. See also: Collectivized 'Rights
7. ^ Kate Pickert (Mar 9, 2009). "Undercover Animal-Rights Investigator". Time
Magazine. Archived from the original on March 10, 2009. Retrieved 2009-12-
21. One of the most powerful tools animal-rights activists have is the video
footage shot inside places like poorly run dog kennels, animal-testing
facilities and factory farms, used as grim evidence of the brutality that can
take place. But how do animal-rights crusaders actually get those videos?
8. ^ Victoria Burnett (July 26, 2007). "Human Rights Watch says migrant
children are at risk in Canary Islands". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-
12-21. They must immediately come up with a plan to close these centers,"
Simone Troller, author of the report and a children's rights researcher for
Human Rights Watch in Europe, said in a telephone interview. "While these
centers continue to exist, we believe children continue to be at risk.
9. ^ "Soap Operas Boost Rights, Global Economist Says". Morning Edition. NPR.
October 21, 2009. Archived from the original on Dec 25, 2009.
Retrieved 2009-12-21. Many of these locally produced programs feature
strong female characters. When Rede Globo began broadcasting in its native
Brazil in 1965 the average woman had about six children — now the average
woman has no children or one child.
10.^ Roemer, John E. (December 14, 2005). "Roemer on equality of
opportunity". New Economist (Blog). New Economist. Retrieved 2009-12-
21. Equality of opportunity is to be contrasted with equality of outcome.
While advocacy of the latter has been traditionally associated with a left-
wing political philosophy, the former has been championed by right-wing
political philosophy. Equality of outcome fails to hold individuals responsible
for imprudent actions that may, absent redress, reduce the values of the
outcomes they enjoy, or for wise actions that would raise the value of the
outcomes above the levels of others'. Equality of opportunity, in contrast,
'levels the playing field,' so that all have the potential to achieve the same
outcomes; whether or not, in the event, they do, depends upon individual
choice.
11.^ "Divine Right of Kings". BBC. 2007-10-11. Retrieved 2009-12-21. [...] the
idea that a king was sacred, appointed by God and above the judgment of
earthly powers [...] was called the Divine Right of Kings and it entered so
powerfully into British culture during the 17th century that it shaped the
pomp and circumstance of the Stuart monarchs, imbued the writing of
Shakespeare and provoked the political thinking of Milton and Locke.
12.^ "The First Global Statement of the Inherent Dignity and Equality". United
Nations. Retrieved 2010-09-13.
13.^ Lauren, Paul Gordon (2003). "Philosophical Visions: Human Nature, Natural
Law, and Natural Rights". The Evolution of International Human Rights:
Visions Seen. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-
1854-X.
14.^ Robertson, Arthur Henry; Merrills, J. G. (1996). Human rights in the world :
an introduction to the study of the international protection of human rights.
Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-4923-1.
15.^ R. B. Serjeant, The Sunnah Jami'ah, pacts with the Yathrib Jews, and the
Tahrim of Yathrib: Analysis and translation of the documents comprised in
the so-called "Constitution of Medina". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London, Vol. 41, No. 1. (1978), p. 4.
16.^ Lepore, Jill (2015-04-13). "The Myth of Magna Carta". The New
Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2024-02-10.

17.^ Dyck, Rand (2000). Canadian Politics: Critical

Approaches (3rd ed.). Thomas Nelson. ISBN 978-0-17-616792-9.

18.^ "1947 Japanese Constitution". Hanover Historical Texts Collection. Hanover

College History Department.

19.^ "Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, 1945". Internet History

Sourcebooks Project.

20.^ "Learn about the Charter". Canada's System of Justice. Department of

Justice Canada. 2018-04-12. Retrieved 2019-02-02