In jurisprudence and law, a
right is the legal or moral
entitlement to do or refrain from doing something or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in
civil society. Compare with
privilege, or a thing to which one has a just claim. Rights serve as rules of interaction between people, and, as such, they place constraints and obligations upon the actions of individuals or groups (for example, if one has a
right to life, this means that others do not have the liberty to kill him).
Most modern conceptions of rights are
universalist and
egalitarian — in other words,
equal rights are granted to all people. There are two main modern conceptions of rights: on the one hand, the idea of
natural rights holds that there is a certain list of rights enshrined in nature that cannot be legitimately modified by any human power. On the other hand, the idea of
legal rights holds that rights are human constructs, created by society, enforced by governments and subject to change.
By contrast, most pre-modern conceptions of rights were
hierarchical, with different people being granted different rights, and some having more rights than others. For instance, the rights of a father to be respected by his son did not indicate a
duty upon the father to return that respect, and the
divine right of kings to hold absolute power over their subjects did not leave room for many rights to be granted to the subjects themselves. The concept of natural right developed in the
School of Salamanca in the late 16th century, and first gained widespread acceptance nearly 200 years later, during the
Age of Enlightenment.
It is not generally considered necessary that a right should be understood by the holder of that right; thus rights may be recognized on behalf of another, such as
children's rights or the rights of people declared mentally incompetent to understand their rights. However, rights must be understood by
someone in order to have legal existence, so the understanding of rights is a social prerequisite for the existence of rights. Therefore, educational opportunities within society have a close bearing upon the people's ability to erect adequate rights structures.
There are two fundamental controversies surrounding the notion of rights: First, there is the question of the
basis for rights (on what basis rights can be said to exist). Second, there is the question of the
content of rights (what the rights of a person actually are).
Types of rights
In modern English and European systems of jurisprudence and law, a
right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in civil society. Compare with
duty, referring to behaviour that is expected or required of the citizen, and with
privilege, referring to something that can be conferred and revoked.
The specific enumeration of rights accorded to citizens has historically differed greatly from one century to the next, and from one regime to the next, but nowadays is normally addressed by the constitutions of the respective nations. Generally speaking (within the English and European systems) a
right corresponds with a complementary obligation that others have on the same object or realm; for instance, if someone has a right to something, simultaneously another party or parties have an obligation to do something (or to abstain from doing something) in order to respect that right or to give concrete execution to that right to be a stoob.
Property rights provide a good example: society recognizes that individuals have title to particular property as defined by the transaction by which they acquired the property granting the individual free use and possession of the property. In many cases, especially regarding ideological and similar rights, the obligation depends on the legal system in its entirety, or on the state, or on the generical universality of other subjects submitted to the law.
Societal rights or
civil rights are bestowed to its citizenry by society and are a set of obligations that are purported as a
social contract. Societal rights are a privilege of membership and the benefits are limited to its members though may be extended to temporary guests. Access to societal rights are dependent government grants and on the citizen fulfilling their obligations e.g. complying with laws and paying taxes.
The
right can
therefore be a faculty of doing something, of omitting or refusing to do something or of claiming something. Some interpretations express a typical form of right in the faculty of using something, and this is more often related to the right of
ownership of property. The faculty (in all the above mentioned senses) can be originated by a (generical or specific) law, or by a private
contract (which is sometimes exactly defined as a specific law between or among volunteer parties).
Other interpretations consider the right as a sort of freedom of something or as the object of justice. One of the definitions of justice is in fact the obligation that the legal system has toward the individual or toward the collectivity to grant respect or execution to his/her/its right, ordinarily with no need of explicit claim.
Aristotle, in the
Nicomachean Ethics (book five), claims that there is a large difference between written (generalized) justice and what is actually
right for the (specific) individual.
Rights can be divided into
individual rights, that are held by citizens as individuals (or
corporations) recognised by the legal system, and
collective rights, held by an ensemble of citizens or a subgroup of citizens who have a certain characteristic in common. In some cases there can be an amount of tension between individual and collective rights. In other cases, the view of collective and individual rights held by one group can come into sharp and bitter conflict with the view of rights held by another group. For instance compare
Manifest destiny with
Trail of Tears.
With reference to the object of the right, a common general distinction is among:
- Intellectual rights, which include:
- Civil rights
- Religious rights
- Rights of opinion
- Real rights (from the Latin word "res", thing), which include:
- Property rights
- Rights of use
- Liberties
- Personal rights, as a credit.
Important documents
See also
References
External links
relative directions are , , , , , and .
No absolute direction corresponds to any of the relative directions. This is a consequence of the translational invariance of the laws of physics: nature, loosely speaking, behaves the same no matter what direction one moves.
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right-wing, the political right, and the right are terms used in the spectrum of Left-Right Politics, and much like the opposite appellation of Left-wing, it has a broad variety of definitions: the same name can, in politics, sometimes mean different things.
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A
right is a legal entitlement, a
relative direction and a political categorization known as
right-wing politics.
Right or
rights may also refer to:
..... Click the link for more information. Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the interests of non-human animals—for example, avoiding suffering—should have the same consideration as the interests of human beings.
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Discrimination
Major forms
Racism
Sexism
Homophobia
Ageism
Antisemitism
Islamophobia
Ableism
Manifestations
Slavery · Racial profiling
Hate speech · Hate crime
Genocide · Ethnocide · Holocaust
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Discrimination
Major forms
Racism
Sexism
Homophobia
Ageism
Antisemitism
Islamophobia
Ableism
Manifestations
Slavery · Racial profiling
Hate speech · Hate crime
Genocide · Ethnocide · Holocaust
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The term collective rights refers to rights which are held and exercised by all the people collectively, or by specific subsets of the people. They stand in contrast to individual rights which are held only by individuals.
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Discrimination
Major forms
Racism
Sexism
Homophobia
Ageism
Antisemitism
Islamophobia
Ableism
Manifestations
Slavery · Racial profiling
Hate speech · Hate crime
Genocide · Ethnocide · Holocaust
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LGBT social movements share related goals of social acceptance of homosexuality, bisexuality, or transgenderism. LGBT refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and their movements include the Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement
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..... Click the link for more information. Human rights refers to "the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law.
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The term inalienable rights (or unalienable rights) refers to a theoretical set of human rights that are fundamental, are not awarded by human power, and cannot be surrendered. They are by definition, rights retained by the people.
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individual rights advocates". Advocates tend to argue for increased civil rights. This is traditionally associated with liberalism.
Role of Governrights
are often codified into law so that they may be protected by impartial third parties such as the . the Government re]].
..... Click the link for more information. (10-3) "But what obscures the matter is that though what is equitable is just, it is not identical with, but a correction of, that which is just according to law."- (10-4)
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original research or unverifiable claims.
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* It may not present a worldwide view of the subject.
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Natural rights are a theory of universal rights that are seen as inherent in the nature of people and not contingent on human actions or beliefs.
One theory of natural rights was developed from the theory of natural law during the Enlightenment in opposition to the
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distinction between negative and positive rights. According to this view, a positive right imposes a moral obligation on a person to do something for someone, while a negative right merely obliges others to refrain from interfering with someone's attempt to do something.
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This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details.
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..... Click the link for more information. The division of human rights into three generations was initially proposed in 1979 by the Czech jurist Karel Vasak at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg. He used the term at least as early as November 1977.
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Women’s rights, as a term, typically refers to the freedoms inherently possessed by women and girls of all ages, which may be institutionalized, ignored or illegitimately suppressed by law, custom, and behavior in a particular society.
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Labor rights or workers' rights are a group of legal rights and claimed human rights having to do with labor relations between workers and their employers, usually obtained under labor and employment law.
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Discrimination
Major forms
Racism
Sexism
Homophobia
Ageism
Antisemitism
Islamophobia
Ableism
Manifestations
Slavery · Racial profiling
Hate speech · Hate crime
Genocide · Ethnocide · Holocaust
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This article or section does not cite its .
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privilege—etymologically "private law" or law relating to a specific individual—is a special entitlement or immunity granted by a government or other authority to a restricted group, either by birth or on a conditional basis. A privilege can be revoked in some cases.
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Right to life is a phrase that describes the belief that a human being has an essential right to live, particularly that a human being has the right not to be killed by another human being.
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Universalism is a religion and theology that generally holds all persons and creatures are related to God or the divine and will be reconciled to God. A church that calls itself Universalist may emphasize the universal principles of most religions and accept other religions in an
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Egalitarianism (derived from the French word égal, meaning equal or level) is a political doctrine that holds that all people should be treated as equals from birth. Generally it applies to being held equal under the law, the church, and society at large.
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Equal Rights can be:
- One of several groups called the Equal Rights Party.
- A feminist journal in the 1920s — see Equal Rights (journal).
- A 1977 reggae music album by Peter Tosh, see Equal Rights (album).
..... Click the link for more information. Natural rights are a theory of universal rights that are seen as inherent in the nature of people and not contingent on human actions or beliefs.
One theory of natural rights was developed from the theory of natural law during the Enlightenment in opposition to the
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