Legal rights: Legal rights are conferred by law. We are entitled to legal rights because our political and legal systems consider them to be rights. Since these rights have been conferred through the creation of laws, they can also be modified, abolished or strengthened by political and legal institutions. Many legal rights are also natural rights, for example, the right to life is supported by the law and by our philosophical definition of humanity. John Locke (1632–1704) was another prominent Western philosopher who conceived of rights as natural and inalienable. Like Hobbes, Locke believed in a natural right to life, liberty, and property. It was once conventional wisdom that Locke greatly influenced the American Revolutionary War with his writings on natural rights, but this claim has been the subject of long controversy in recent decades. As historian A.J. Carlyle notes, «There is no change in political theory so astonishing in its completeness as the passage from Aristotle`s theory to the later philosophical view of Cicero and Seneca.
We think this cannot be better illustrated than with regard to the theory of the equality of human nature. [13] Charles H. McIlwain also notes that «the idea of human equality is the Stoics` deepest contribution to political thought» and that «its greatest influence lies in the altered conception of law that has resulted in part.» [14] Cicero argues in De Legibus that «we are born for justice, and this right is not based on opinions, but on nature.» [15] Natural rights are those that are not defined or depend on the laws or customs of a particular culture, tradition, rule or government. Learn more about diversity Guide to natural social rights Inalienable rights are those that God has given to man once and for all at creation. Since God granted such rights, governments could not, by definition, take them away. Inalienable rights are fundamental components of humanity, the basis of moral interactions between human beings and irrevocable. These are rights that can never be lost. Natural rights and legal rights differ because one is encoded by law and the other is considered universal and morally granted to all persons at birth. Legal rights are also known as civil rights and are imposed by government agencies to settle criminal and civil cases.
Natural rights and legal rights are often integrated when laws are created; Natural rights are protected by law, such as the right to due process, so the natural right to liberty is not lightly suppressed. While the First Amendment was originally the third on the list of original Bill of Rights proposals that Congress submitted to the states for approval, it was the first amendment to deal with individual rights. Almost without exception, First Amendment rights are considered fundamental because they deal with matters of conscience, thought, and opinion. The rights enshrined in the documents are constitutional or civil rights that serve to shape the values shared by a people. Under the U.S. system, individuals can file claims for these rights in courts that have the power to enforce them. With the possible exception of equality, which was later recognized in the Fourteenth Amendment Equality Safeguard Clause (1868), it is difficult to identify rights outside the First Amendment that are more closely related to the notion of natural rights; Hence the arguments that these rights should be in a «privileged position» and that they are relatively absolute. Natural and legal rights are two types of rights that are theoretically different from philosophers and political scientists. Natural rights are rights that do not depend on the laws, customs, or beliefs of a particular culture or government, and are therefore universal and inalienable.
Legal rights, on the other hand, are those conferred on a person by a particular legal system. Natural law theory is closely related to natural rights theory. During the Enlightenment, natural law theory challenged the divine right of kings and became an alternative justification for establishing a social contract, positive law, and government—and therefore legal rights—in the form of classical republicanism. Conversely, the concept of natural rights is used by some anarchists to question the legitimacy of all these institutions. The idea of human rights is also closely linked to that of natural rights; Some see no difference between the two and view the two as designations for the same thing, while others choose to keep the terms separate to eliminate the link with certain characteristics traditionally associated with natural rights.