Talk:Rights

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Contents 1 History of the concept of 'rights' 2 fr interwiki 3 Bias to discussion of negative rights 4 Possibly poor example 5 rename to Rights? 6 individual/group rights 7 Golden Rule 8 Really tangled paragraph 9 perhaps a discussion of views in other systems? 10 Small grammar change 11 Removed 'privilege' sentence 12 Major cleanup 13 Libertarian view 14 Piratejosh's edits 14.1 Great Changes, One Suggestion 15 Rewording 16 Notable people? 17 Natural rights excluded? 18 Some recent edits 19 Unenumerated Rights 20 Freaking Vandals!

[edit] History of the concept of 'rights'

This long rambling essay really has little to do with rights. If no one objects, I'm going to delete this entire section.--JW1805 02:21, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, there is very little in this article concerning the concept of rights. It is largely a series of essays describing contributors' views on topics related to the concepts of rights. It is not appropriate for Wikipedia. Much of it—particularly the history section and the section "Rights portrayed in drama and media"—is effectively original research. Other parts (e.g., "The inaction problem") simply express contributors' opinions on a topic related to rights. Many of those parts discuss the concept of human rights or natural rights (which already have their own articles), not rights in general.

I think much of this article needs to be deleted. In fact, I think it might be best if it was deleted and re-started from scratch, with someone doing some actual research and backing up their statements with citations. — Mateo SA | talk 02:36, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree, I'm going to delete the History, Media, and Inaction sections. The others are workable, I think. --JW1805 02:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] fr interwiki

I have been told that the interwiki of this page to French language actually points to the page about Law. Checking the en interwiki of the page fr:Droit, it points back to Law. So this should be fixed. I couldn't help as I don't know any French. -- Lerdsuwa 16:17, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Since languages are different, you can't always get a one-to-one correspondence between articles. I have seen some cases where articles had more than one interwiki for the same language. THe French word "Droit" would cover both. So the only way to "fix" it I know of, would be to make a second interwiki link on the French article, on e pointing here and one pointing to "Law"... ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 16:38, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps fr:Droits de l'Homme would be more on the mark? - Jmabel | Talk 18:32, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bias to discussion of negative rights

The article currently says things like:

Most modern conceptions of rights are universalist and egalitarian; in other words, equal rights are granted to all people. Such rights may be defined in terms of the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you"). An individual agrees to respect the rights of others in exchange for the assurance that the others will respect the same rights for him in turn.

This appears to be talking solely about negative rights! Is that satisfactory? Dealing with positive rights at the same time makes the writing task much harder but is very necessary for teaching our readers about the subject properly. -- pde 00:40, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how that remark is specific to negative rights. Could you expand on your remark? - Jmabel | Talk 18:39, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possibly poor example

"Property rights provide a good example…" Yes and no. It's a matter of an example of what. I think we would do better to give two examples, one of rights that are recognized as truly universal, and property as the other, because property rights, by their nature, are in some respects particular: they pertain to the owner of specific property. Freedom of thought or of speech might be good examples of truer universality, at least in the realm of theory if not in practice (since they are abridged by some governments). That is, my having certain thoughts or uttering certain speech doed not deprive anyone else of thought or speech, but my owning particular private property is precisely at the expense of anyone else's claim on that property. - Jmabel | Talk 06:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] rename to Rights?

[edit] individual/group rights

I see that there is a seperate individual rights article. I guess that means this article needs to include talk of both individual and group rights, so it needs some modifications. Maybe individual rights should be merged into this article? RJII 01:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC) I created a group rights article, if anyone wants to work on that. RJII 01:35, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Golden Rule

From the article:

Such rights may be defined in terms of the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you"). An individual agrees to respect the rights of others in exchange for the assurance that the others will respect the same rights for him in turn.

Clearly a well-intentioned explanation, but not necessarily on the mark. It does get at one thing: a moral injunction to treat others as one wishes to be treated oneself. If we are getting that into the article, I would think that it should be by way of the concept of social contract.

The Golden Rule and the categorical imperative do not lead directly to a set of rights: they lead to a system of moral obligation, which can be translated into a theory of justice, from which a concept of rights can be derived.

Anyway, I think we need to get something like that into the article rather than the sentences just quoted, but I know that my wording here is too academic. I'm open to ideas. - Jmabel | Talk 03:19, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Following that up: we should probably mention the School of Salamanca, who were (as far as I know) the first to clearly articulate anything resembling the modern, universalist theory of human rights (16th century), rooting a theory of popular sovereignty in the concept of natural law. There might be precursors of which I'm unaware in the Muslim world or in Asia; I'm pretty sure there was nothing comparable (and comparably articulated) in Classical times, nor in Asia before that time. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which we quote in the article, was in no small measure a defense of slavery based on the different nature of the slave. - Jmabel | Talk 03:26, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I've just removed the following sentence from the article because it is out of context (belongs more in the History section of Natural rights) and unsourced. Don't worry, I'm not being prejudiced against this line in particular... I'm in the process of making major overhauls to this page, others part of it will suffer similar treatment.

The redacted sentence: "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."

-Pfhorrest (talk) 06:52, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The golden rule is a religous edict that has been put under scrutiny for years. There is even a history of Jewish Christian conflict over this rule. The rule is an example of the Ethic of Reciprocity and has been found to be flawed on the basis that it does not take into account the wishes of others and would mean that people have to accept what others like regardless of their individual preferences, or that others have the right to force their preferences on you. Simply put the golden rule if turned to establish rights would indicate that because I like getting tatoos or sodomy I have the right to give others tatoos and anything else I like. For obvious reasons this logic is flawed and it has been stated that the rule should be amended to, "do unto others as they would have done to them". Regardless the golden rule deserves not palce in this article concerning rights and I move to have it removed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stratvic (talk • contribs) 26 September 2006.

[edit] Really tangled paragraph

The conception of a right to something that implicitly creates an obligation on someone else to provide that thing (a positive right) is widely challenged. You can not enforce your wish for something (under the auspices of a right) if it implicitly constitutes an obligation on another to do something for you. However, one person's right to something creates a negative right in that you have the right for that thing not be interfered with by another, and that other is obligated not to interfere with your right to it. The obligation test is widely used to determine what constitutes a right. To illustrate: You have the right to own an axe, but you do not have a right to an axe. If you do own an axe, others have an obligation not to steal it.

I've got a post-graduate education, and I had to read practically every sentence of this paragraph more than once to parse it. And it has a lot of problems beyond that:

• Normally we avoid second person. I don't see why it is needed here.
• "widely challenged" with no citation: I have almost never seen this challenged except by liberatarians. I'm pretty confident that most people, for example, consider that the right to life extends to the point of creating an obligation for a government or society to attempt to rescue victims of a natural disaster. I would doubt that there is a "widely" held belief that a person dying of thirst while someone next to him had abundant water could be reasonably expected to die respecting his neighbor's property rights.
• By the second sentence, this has switched to imperative (or, more precisely, hortatory) mode, which is entirely inappropriate. It becomes a statement of a narrowly libertarian conception of rights, in the article's narrative voice.
• Again "widely used" without citation. I cannot name a country where this, in general, has the force of law. Certainly not the U.S., one of the more libertarian countries in the industrialized world, but one which recognizes a right to a publicly financed primary and secondary education.

In short: poorly written libertarian cant.

I'll allow at least 48 hours (and probably more) for someone to rewrite this in a way that belongs here, but if it hasn't been substantially fixed by then, I intend simply to remove it. - Jmabel | Talk 22:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

It is the the right to pocess an axe that is the right not the owning of an axe. I have the right implies that it is something that has been granted which can be denied. A right is that which can be described but cannot be denied. It simply exist as a law of nature. To grant a right implies to that which cannot be denied ever again. Hence the quandry and misuse of the word and that to which it implies. All rights are priviledges because they can and will be denied. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.86.16.187 (talk • contribs) 16 December 2006.

As far as I can see, this addresses none of the issues I raised. - Jmabel | Talk 06:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] perhaps a discussion of views in other systems?

It's my understanding that the distinction between law and right is quite different in some other languages, such as French and German using droit and Recht respectively to cover both, and that this partly reflects their legal systems' different conceptions of the underlying ideas. Of course this article shouldn't go off on linguistic tangents, but insofar as the language reflects a different conceptual viewpoint, it might be worth discussing how universal and/or controversial the law vs. right distinction is, and how it relates to philosophy of law and so on. --Delirium 23:59, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Small grammar change

I changed "a right on a thing" to "a right to something". Although it's a trivial change, I note it here in case there's something I'm missing. Mujokan 06:26, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removed 'privilege' sentence

I removed the sentence:

Compare with privilege, or a thing to which one has a just claim.

This was in the introduction, but I don't think that's really the definition of a privilege, and if something else is meant by it, I don't understand it, and it would be helpful if someone could rephrase it so it is simpler. Thanks, Drum guy (talk) 21:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a better way to phrase that concept is that a right does not require permission and a privilege does require permission. A simplified definition of right may be in order: "A right is an action that an individual can do, that does not require permission, and that is generally accepted or condoned (for example, not prohibited by custom or law)".

I am not going to modify the main body text without some feedback as there are many opinions as to what is or is not a right. For example, the bill of rights outlines many rights but it has been argued that the bill of rights is a blueprint of how to convert rights into privileges and then to limit them. A specific example is the right to keep and bear arms. Can you carry an unlicensed firearm in the United States of America and not be subject to arrest when that firearm is discovered upon your person? James thirteen (talk) 20:06, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Major cleanup

I've just more or less completed a major cleanup, reorganization, and expansion of this article. I've excised a large chunk of text that I find to be of very poor quality; I am going to attempt to work what of it I can back into the article, but for now I've moved it here to the talk page. The excised text follows:

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 standing, 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. 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 is dependent on 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.

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.

The reason of this is that every law is laid down in general terms, while there are matters about which it is impossible to speak correctly in general terms. Where, then, it is necessary to speak in general terms, but impossible to do so correctly, the legislator lays down that which holds good for the majority of cases, being quite aware that it does not hold good for all.

The law, indeed, is none the less correctly laid down because of this defect; for the defect lies not in the law, nor in the lawgiver, but in the nature of the subject-matter, being necessarily involved in the very conditions of human action.

—Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (10-3) (Peters' translation)^[1]

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.

I know I'm still fairly new around here and I'm not entirely certain this is an acceptable move to make, but some of these rights pages are in serious disrepair and I am trying in good faith to fix them up the best I can. Apologies is anything I do is inappropriate - please feel free to notify me and I will refrain in the future. -Pfhorrest (talk) 07:59, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Libertarian view

I've just undone the following contribution by User:Simultaneous movement, which was placed in the "theoretical distinctions" section, because it is not a theoretical distinction, and because it seems to talk specifically about negative, natural, claim rights, and so better suits one of those pages (said user has also recently made a similar contribution to Natural and legal rights) than this page on rights in general. However, if anyone would like to discuss better ways of working this or something similar into this or another article, I'm including it below for posterity:

The libertarian view is that "a right is a principle which morally prohibits men from using force or any substitute for force against anyone whose behavior is non-coercive. A right is a moral prohibition; it doesn't specify anything with regard to what actions the possessor of the right may take (so long as his actions are non-coercive) – it morally prohibits others from forcibly interfering with any of his non-coercive actions."^[2]

-Pfhorrest (talk) 06:56, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Piratejosh's edits

I've just partially reverted the recent edits by User:Piratejosh85 (retaining Zodon's intermediary changes), and I'm here to explain.

First, I've removed this passage:

Legal positivism denies the existance of natural rights, saying all rights are constructed.

The article on Natural and legal rights already discusses the concepts of natural law vs positive law, and we don't want to go into too much detail on each particular distinction here. Also, mentioning legal positivism without its contradictory position (which doesn't seem to have a proper name, much less an article, as far as I can tell) seems a bit biased against natural rights.

Second, regarding claim rights, I've replaced this passage:

[...] serve at least two functions: first to ensure one's access to a given resource. Second, claim rights dictate and constrain others actions, preventing them from interfering with one's persuit of their claims [...]

with the older phrasing:

[...] entail constraints and obligations upon the actions of other individuals or groups [...]

Claims rights do not all serve to ensure access to resources, and that is certainly not the primary sense of the term; only a subset of positive claim right regard the provision of resources. The second meaning in the reverted passage seems dependent on the first meaning: the "claims" in question are not claims against resources, but claims against people; thus the non-interference in the second meaning is what one has a claim to, not something enabling one to have something else that one has a claim to.

I've also reinserted the word "simply" regarding liberty rights being called simply liberties; it just sounds better to my ear, since the sentence is about whether to call them "liberty rights" or just "liberties" simpliciter.

I reverted the sentence defining group rights because the alteration oblitterates one of the possible senses of group rights. the article on group rights is itself ambiguous on what exactly "group rights" means - are rights held individually by members of only a select group "group rights" too, or must the rights be held by the group collectively? The text here was copied verbatim from there, and until that gets clarified this article should probably mirror that ambiguity.

I'm not entirely certain that the example of group-individual conflicts is the best, but I can't articulate a particular complaint against it at the moment so I'll leave it.

I'm likewise uncertain about the new Explicit and unenumerated rights section. I do like bringing that attention to this distinction, and I've even wikilinked to the article on unenumerated rights. But this distinction is a subset of the legal division of rights - there is no such thing as an explicit or unenumerated natural right - whereas none of the other distinctions are subsets of each other. That is, you can have negative natural individual liberty rights, or positive legal group claim rights, or any combination of the four earlier distinctions; which is not true of the distinction between explicit and unenumerated rights. I'm not sure what to do about this.

Finally, I've reworded Piratejosh's addition to the Areas of concern subsection to read "legal or moral issues" rather than just "legal issues", so as to include natural rights as well as legal rights. --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:50, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Great Changes, One Suggestion

All of these make a great deal of sense. I would still advocate noting that some people do not believe in natural rights. If a great deal of respected people don't believe something extists, that should be noted in a place like this. I, therefore, advocate the reinsertion of the objection to natural rights via legal positivism.Piratejosh85 (talk) 18:55, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I would not object to its inclusion if we could figure out some balancing statement to pair it with. Without that, it comes of as "this is the concept of natural rights; this is the concept of legal rights; some people dispute that natural rights exist at all"... and then what about people who dispute the validity of legal rights? (i.e. the position that 'only natural law is normatively valid, positive law is just opinion backed by force'). While there are articles on both natural law and positive law, there seems to be only an article on legal positivism and no corresponding article on... well I'm not sure what you'd call the opposite of legal positivism, maybe some form of anarchism I suppose, but that's more a political philosophy than a legal philosophy per se. I'm open to suggestions on a more balanced way of summarizing this controversy, both for this article and for the natural and legal rights article itself. --Pfhorrest (talk) 08:39, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I understand what your trying to get at. What I hear you saying is that, as a non-biased source, Wikipedia needs to present information that doesn't favor either one side or the other. Entries need to ballance the oppinions of experts, expressing all relevant distinctions in a fair way. By citing the fact that some experts don't believe in natural rights, you claim, that would unfairly bias the article in favor of legal positivism. This objection is an important one, but I think it should be reconsidered on the basis of one thing: there is no other side to the claim, but this does not bias the article, it's just saying some experts don't believe in natural rights. Let me give an example as to why it wouldn't bias the article: to these experts, natural rights are like unicorns, immagined. And, just as there is no opposite claim from "unicorns don't exist," there exists no opposite claim from natural rights don't exist. The furthest logical oposite you could get it that other experts disagree (believing in unicorns). That is, of course, implied in the "some experts," though. Therefore, I believe it an important point to note under the natural and legal rights section. Piratejosh85 (talk) 20:47, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Except that in your unicorns analogy, unicorns aren't being contrasted with something else. To extend that analogy to something a little better, say that we had managed to genetically engineer some horses with horns sticking out of their foreheads. We could then contrast "magical unicorns" versus "genetic unicorns". Then, just as some people would say "magical unicorns don't exist", there are some people who says "your 'genetic unicorns' aren't really unicorns at all, they're just genetically engineered horses with horns growing out of their heads".

The analogy, of course, is that genetic unicorns are to legal rights as magical unicorns are to natural rights. Just as some people would say "genetically engineering a horse with a horn does not a unicorn make, and we'll either find real unicorns out there or not", there are anarchist and libertarian positions which claim that governments cannot grant or create or remove or in any other way alter anyone's rights, they can only discover (or not), respect (or not), and enforce (or not) the rights that people naturally have (or not). That is the position I would like to include to counterbalance legal positivism; it's just doing so in a succinct way that is difficult. Various articles on natural law, natural rights, anarchism, libertarianism, etc, cover this position in different degrees, but there doesn't seem to be a concise term (and corresponding article) for that position like there is for legal positivism. Though... I suppose philosophical anarchism comes close. --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:09, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I also found the examples of group-individual rights conflict questionable. Particularly the unions vs. workers. The history of the labor movement is complex, with lots of different cases, some where unions improve the lot of workers, and some where they may have been at cross purposes, or where longer term gains may have been achieved at the expense of short term considerations. The mention is too vague. Removed until we can cite a clear more concrete example.

The example on class action vs individual suit may be better, but I am less familiar with that area. A citation would help. Zodon (talk) 20:35, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rewording

I find a problem is the phrase, "The contemporary notion of rights is universalist and egalitarian." There are a few things wrong with this. First, there is no such thing as an egalitarian notion. Notions cannot discriminate. What this phase seems to be trying to say is that rights should be distributed everywhere (universally) and equally (egalitarian). There are problems here. First of all, the article needs to point out that not everyone believes these things: it is therefore inaccurate to simply say, "The contemporary notion or rights is..." That may be true in the US, but not everywhere. Take the contemporary caste system for example, where rights are neither distributed everywhere nor in equal amounts so to say. Still another problem is that "universal" or "unversally" might be appropriate, the word "universalist" currently links to the world religion and philosophy which has innappropriatly little to do with the meaning given to the word here. I therefore believe the phrase needs to be reconsidered.

The second phrase I believe needs reworking is, "For instance, compare Manifest destiny with Trail of Tears." One of the introduction paragraphs talks about times two or more philosophies of rights come into conflict. Manifest destiny is a good example of a philosophy of rights, but the trail of tears is not. Supposedly the philosophy of whites would need to be compared to the philosophy of the non-white colonized (in this case Native Americans, though not always). The trail of tears is not such a philosophy; it is, factually, a very long march. I believe rewording is then in order. Piratejosh85 (talk) 18:17, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

You make good points. I've just made some edits, qualifying "contemporary rights" with "many", giving the intended impression that notions of rights are more commonly universalist and egalitarian today than in yesteryears, rather than the incorrect assertion that all contemporary notions of rights are universalist and egalitarian. I've also fixed the wikilink for "universalism", and removed the reference to the Trail of Tears entirely; it doesn't really seem necessary to cite an example there in the lede.

However, I don't think there is a problem with calling a notion of rights universalist or egalitarian, and we certainly aren't trying to make the normative claim that rights should (or should not) be universal and equal. Rather, we are trying to say that (many of) the contemporary notions of rights are that rights are (in the case of natural rights) or should be (in the case of legal rights) universal and equal; or in other words, that (many) contemporary people are universalists and egalitarians with regard to rights, and thus that their conception of rights is that of universalists and egalitarians. Thus, "many contemporary notions of rights" - that is, the notions of rights held by many contemporary people - "are universalist and egalitarian" - that is, notions in accordance with the universalist and egalitarian principles of said people. --Pfhorrest (talk)

[edit] Notable people?

Why does the Notable People list only seem to include mostly modern left-wing heroes and/or anti-war activists? Shouldn't Jefferson precede Jimmy Carter? That list is a joke. 76.194.214.56 (talk) 23:39, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Please feel free to expand it with people you feel are notable, or to contest any that you feel are not. That list is from a very old version of this page. --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:59, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I think the notable people section should be removed, or needs more specific criteria to focus it. (It would be easy to expand it to whatever size one wanted by grabbing contents from various lists or categories). As a "see also" style of thing, links to lists of various rights activists, or rights activist categories would be far more inclusive.

Could replace with links to things like List of women's rights activists, List of civil rights leaders, List of suffragists and suffragettes, List of opponents of slavery, List of LGBT rights activists, List of disability rights activists, etc. (or even better, is there already a list of rights activists lists?)

Or if we can come up with a more focused purpose, that would be fine too.

For the moment I have removed the expand tag, since it isn't clear how it should be expanded. Zodon (talk) 02:13, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Addition - I don't object to the list that is here as such, and some of the areas of rights may not have lists, so leaving notable folks in areas where aren't lists is okay by me. But where there are lists, think need clear reason to single this person out. Zodon (talk) 02:32, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Natural rights excluded?

The very first sentence of the article "Rights are legal or moral entitlements or permissions." effectively excludes the concept of natural rights. Natural rights are not entitlements or permissions. The word "right" as used in the U.S. constitution doesn't refer to an entitlement or permission. The words entitlement and permission imply that they would not exist without being "granted" by government. The word right as used in the constitution assumes pre-existence.

This entire article seems to be about entitlements, not about rights, as the word has been historically used to describe the liberties that man is universally born with, and that exist whether or not they are protected by government.

I realize that the word is used today in lieu of the word entitlement, mostly for political purposes, but should the very first sentence of the article effectively exclude the concept of natural rights? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.110.227.11 (talk) 09:59, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

The lead sentence says nothing about the source of such rights (governmental, natural, divine, etc.) (i.e. does not imply grant by government).

What does it refer to then in the US Constitution? It occurs once in the original Constitution (where "control" would appear to be a suitable replacement word), plus several times in the bill of rights.

The "liberties man is universally born with" would be human rights (i.e., a different article).

Do you have suggestions for other phrasing? Zodon (talk) 11:43, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

The phrase in the lede "...legal or moral..." is meant to explicitly include natural rights in the discussion. Likewise "permissions" was added explicitly to include liberty rights in the discussion as well. An older version of this article read something like "rights are legal entitlements..." and I took exception to that for the reasons you cite and modified it accordingly.

Also note in the body of the article the summaries of Claim rights and liberty rights (discussing the difference between rights as entitlements and rights as permissions) and Natural and legal rights (discussions the difference between, well, natural rights and legal rights). --Pfhorrest (talk) 00:02, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Some recent edits

Pirate Josh recently made some edits which I partially reverted, and I'm here to discuss this at his request.

My main contention with most of these edits was their essay-like style and uncited nature in conjunction: had they been cited I would have attempted to clean up the style instead, or likewise if they had been in a more encyclopedic tone I would likely have just added some {{fact}} tags.

Anyway, my point by point thoughts on the content of the edits:

• The change of the intro to say that rights "stem from a particular value system" and the following section on "Non-legal or moral rights" seems somewhat biased toward a relativistic POV: a natural rights theorist would not say that rights are "granted" by any "value-system", as that implies that they are somehow human constructs rather than objective, naturally occurring things. Perhaps a compromise could be rephrasing the intro to "'Rights are permissions or entitlements of a legal, moral, or other nature." This might actually be a good road to go down anyway, as now that I think about it, Josh does have a good point about "rights" in an etiquette sense being neither strictly legal or moral in nature, and there is already the article on social rights discussing another (or perhaps the same?) neither-moral-nor-legal sense of "rights". Though I worry a bit that going down that road would require, for the sake of consistency, splitting Natural and legal rights back into Natural rights and Legal rights...
  • On a slightly tangential note, maybe the "vital importance" phrase in there could be turned into something like "of vital importance in the fields of law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontological ethics", somewhat mixing Josh's version and mine.
• The section titled "Denotion" is one of the most essay-like part of Josh's edits, and is rather tangential to this article which is an overview of rights topics. I do like the calling of attention to the absolute vs conditional rights distinction (hence I left that addition in there under "Theoretical distinctions"), but a longer treatment of it belongs on a page like Moral absolutism or something instead of here. We do need some citable sources for it though.
• Regarding "Rights vs privileges", that is a good topic that should probably be discussed here somewhere, but the section Josh added was both very essay-like and also biased toward a relativistic POV again, and I'm not so sure its content was factually correct either. A quick search for other, cited wiki content regarding privileges vs rights turns up the article on Privilege, which seems to draw the distinction as between universal and non-universal entitlements (claim rights), and Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld in whose analysis "privilege" meant what is elsewhere here called a liberty right.
• I like the moving of the paragraph(s) about different conceptions of rights in different time periods being moved down with the various legal rights documents, and that being renamed to focus on the history of rights. Although, if we are going that route, we ought to include various purely philosophical treatises on rights in there along with all those legal documents.

I think I'm going to make some of the compromise changes I suggested above just now, mostly to the intro. Please discuss. --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:03, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Pfhorrest, Thanks for the attention paid to this article. I appreciate the work you've done. Here are my thoughts and ideas. I've added them in response form to what you posted. I hope this system is agreeable. I think we both have our ideas on the table and I don't believe anyone else is going to object to changes. So, would you be willing to make the changes you see as commensurate with both our ideas? Again, thanks for you work and I'm looking forward to seeing this article as good as it can get. Piratejosh85 (talk) 01:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

The change of the intro to say that rights "stem from a particular value system" and the following section on "Non-legal or moral rights" seems somewhat biased toward a relativistic POV: a natural rights theorist would not say that rights are "granted" by any "value-system" as that implies that they are somehow human constructs rather than objective, naturally occurring things.

You said, “a natural rights theorist would not say that rights are ‘granted’ by any ‘value-system’”. However, I think what you might mean is that a natural rights theorists would insist that some rights are not granted by a value system, i.e. exist in nature. But, he would not deny, I believe, the existence of other rights that do stem from other, posited, systems, such as the rules of manners.

Perhaps a compromise could be rephrasing the intro to "'Rights are permissions or entitlements of a legal, moral, or other nature."

I really like this. It’s good. The fact that there are so many other systems which might confer rights merits them mention in the intro, which is done in the possibility just given.

This might actually be a good road to go down anyway, as now that I think about it, Josh does have a good point about "rights" in an etiquette sense being neither strictly legal or moral in nature, and there is already the article on social rights discussing another (or perhaps the same?) neither-moral-nor-legal sense of "rights".

Regarding "Rights vs privileges", that is a good topic that should probably be discussed here

I definitely agree that the majority of “ink” was devoted to what you’re referring to as a realistic POV, my point was only to point out that the argument could be made. On the other hand, I agree that fair treatment means devoting equal amount of space to opposing arguments. And to the accusation that I did not do that, I am definitely guilty. I, though, also think that there should be a section talking about the differences between rights and priv. And, consistent with the content that I added, I think the point should be raised that some might argue that there is, in fact, no difference. I however, acknowledge that a more fair and explained discussion is in order.

Piratejosh85 (talk) 01:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Unenumerated Rights

I saw that unenumerated rights needs expansion and documentation, and I don't have time or inclination to do it, but to those who would, the prototypical unenumerated right, which is encapsulated in the fourth and ninth amendments (and particularly the ninth, which is essentially all about unenumerated rights), among others, is the so-called Right to Privacy. In order to properly defend the unenumerated rights claim that was made in the article, one could reference (appeals, supreme) court cases in which the majority opinion made reference to the unenumerated right to privacy. Of course, there are many others, but privacy seems to be the poster child for the topic. 147.105.3.11 (talk) 22:34, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Freaking Vandals!

RAAWRR! Just had to get that out there. Why is this page vandalised so much? I hate it and it is so anoying. Piratejosh85 (talk) 04:49, 11 June 2009 (UTC)