by Michael Greaney

Created on: August 01, 2008

It comes as something of a surprise to learn that, while a great many people talk about rights and verge on obsessing about them, very few people actually know what a "right" is. A right - philosophically and legally - is the power to do or not do some act or acts in relation to others. The "correlative" (that is, the other "side" of) a right is a "duty." A duty is the obligation to do or not do some act or acts in relation to others who have rights.

A "natural right" is a right that belongs to a human being simply because someone is human. Each human being is as fully human as every other human being, so each human being has the same natural rights. Traditionally, the natural rights to life, liberty, property, and "pursuit of happiness" (construed as the right to seek the "good" and develop more fully as a human being) are considered the premier natural rights. Other rights, including whatever is derived from custom, tradition, and positive law, are "derived" or "secondary" rights, and must be in conformity with our basic natural rights in order to be considered "just."

Rights are so important that they are what defines something as a "person." Something that has "natural rights" is a "natural person." Something that has rights only because someone passed a law to that effect, or because tradition or custom so defines the thing in those terms, is an "artificial person." In the United States, all human beings are "natural persons" by definition.

The Declaration of Independence, the founding document of the United States (despite recent movements to take away its special status), makes this clear: "ALL men are created equal," meaning all have the same natural rights. Nor are we allowed to play word games with the word "man" or "men" - in context it means every human being. Jefferson, a statesman and politician knew full well that not everyone enjoyed full civil rights, or even any rights at all, but that did not detract from the force of the statement. As it declared in the Constitution, the document based on the Declaration of Independence, we are adjured to work for a "more perfect union," which would not make sense if it had not already been recognized that the new country embodied some serious flaws, as Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers were well aware.

A "person" is thus a member of society. The social order (the common good) is constructed of institutions - rights - so that human beings can live together in peace and mutually beneficial cooperation.

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