Natural rights

Natural rights are rights understood as inherent in human nature rather than created or granted by governments. Their existence is commonly grounded in human nature, reason, or divine law.

John Locke: John Locke was an English philosopher whose political theory defended natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Locke made natural rights central to a theory of government founded on consent.
Natural law: Natural law is the view that moral principles arise from human nature or reason and can be known independently of enacted law. Natural rights are often treated as individual entitlements grounded in natural law.
United States Declaration of Independence: The 1776 United States Declaration of Independence announced separation from Britain and justified it through political principles. Its claim that people possess unalienable rights became a landmark statement of natural-rights reasoning.
Legal positivism: Legal positivism holds that law’s validity depends on social sources and procedures, not necessarily on moral merit. It separates the existence of legal rights from claims about rights inherent in human nature.
Thomas Hobbes: Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher who argued that political authority arises from a social contract to escape insecurity. Hobbes grounded natural liberty in self-preservation but drew different conclusions about sovereign power.
Human dignity: Human dignity is the inherent worth attributed to every person, often treated as a basis for moral and legal claims. Appeals to dignity explain why natural rights are said to belong to every person.
French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: The 1789 French declaration set out rights and principles that challenged the privileges of the old regime. It presented liberty and equality as rights belonging to people by birth.
Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism is the ethical theory that actions and institutions should be judged by their consequences for overall well-being. Utilitarian arguments assess rights by their effects rather than treating them as inherent constraints.
Hugo Grotius: Hugo Grotius was a Dutch jurist and philosopher who helped shape modern natural law and international law. His account of natural law offered a rational foundation for rights and duties among people and states.
Inalienable rights: Inalienable rights are rights that cannot legitimately be surrendered, transferred, or taken away. The language of inalienability expresses a common claim about natural rights’ permanence.

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