Talk:Natural rights and legal rights/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Oliver Pereira

The very existence of this article is baffling. What is its subject? There are two entirely distinct topics in the title; one might as well have an article entitled Oranges and fruit bats. (I know this article is not unique in this respect. When I was more active at Wikipedia, articles even sillier than this one were popping up all the time, and their acceptance was one of a myriad reasons why I pretty much gave up on the project.) The article seems to be pushing the point of view that rights can be partitioned into natural rights and legal rights. This is not even close to being true. Everyone is familiar with the concept of legal rights. These are created by enacting laws, and are of great importance to anyone studying law. Non-legal rights exist in any ethical system which admits the existence of rights and which has not been fully incorporated into a legal system, but these need not be considered "natural"; indeed many philosophers of ethics dispute the existence of "natural rights". Of course, the concept of natural rights is one that is discussed, so it needs an article. However, the article that discusses the concept should be where people expect it to be, which is at natural rights - or better yet, at natural right. (Wikipedia convention has always been to keep article titles singular; c.f. cat, not cats.) Similarly, there should be an article at legal right. A law student would be baffled to look up information on legal rights and find all this philosophical waffle. It is of no relevance to their subject. Furthermore, the entanglement of inalienable rights into this mess isn't helping matters, either. There are three separate issues: (a) whether a right is legal or extra-legal, (b) whether it is natural or artificial, and (c) whether it is alienable or inalienable. Some philosophers of ethics may contend that one of these categorisations implies another, but such contentions are controversial, and should be stated as points of view rather than as points of fact. We need at least three separate articles to discuss these three separate issues. -- Oliver P. (talk) 23:16, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

You are making some very big changes here against established consensus which cannot be simply undone without administrative powers like yours. (I speak here of moving pages, e.g. I cannot move Legal right back to Legal rights where it belongs without deleting the redirect currently at Legal rights... although I suppose a copy and paste would suffice in the interim).

You also exhibit some very obvious bias in your use of the phrase "philosophical waffle", and your use of unorthodox phrases such as "philosopher[s] of ethics" and "philosophy of ethics"), which I have never seen used by any actual philosophers (hint: the philosophy of ethics is just called ethics, because ethics is a branch of philosophy), makes me think that you are unfamiliar with and biased against the philosophical aspects of rights theory.

God, there are so many points to discuss here I don't know where to begin... I'm going to use this as the main talk page for all of your various edits across several pages because they were all a part of this article until your edits today and IMO belong as part of this article still.

This article is about the theoretical distinction between rights which are man-made (products of law, artificial, legal rights) and rights which are not man-made (natural rights). Compare the article on Negative and positive rights, and the distinction between Natural law and Positive law which is analogous to that between natural rights and legal rights.

Our of curiosity, what do you think someone searching for "legal rights" would find in an article of that name? An enumeration of rights enshrined in law? Under which jurisdiction, in that case? The article that was merged into this one, which you have now split out, speaks almost entirely of legal rights as they contrast with natural rights, hence the merger into this article discussing that contrast, rather than have two articles discussing the same contrast.

I concede you may have a point about alienable/inalienable being distinct from legal/natural, since I suppose a law might claim that, by law, such-and-such a right may not be alienated from a person, but as far as I can see the two distinctions are at least largely coextensive, and this splitting should not be going on without some discussion here first.

Finally, on the point of singular versus plural, there was a long discussion about this at Talk:Right#rename_to_Rights.3F, and the consensus was to move it from Right to Rights. You have just unilaterally undone that, and done the same for several other articles.

I am going to undo what of your edits I can, but as some of them require an admin to undo (and previously had admin consensus to do in the first place), I ask you PLEASE revert yourself and come discuss this before single-handedly tearing up what other people have been building for quite some time now. --Pfhorrest (talk) 01:30, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

OPPOSE!!! it makes no sense why you would join these two together, they are not even close to the same thing! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.37.240.151 (talk) 00:27, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

i disagree also —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.86.12.144 (talk) 16:20, 22 September 2009

I question the very supposition that natural rights should be conjoined with legal rights, as I have recently brought up again below.

The reasoning here seems to me to suggest that there is connection between the two (or at least to suggest in some way that there SHOULD or OUGHT to be a connection); this is a moral argument, not a legal one. The POV is not neutral. This question comes up in the very opening paragraph of SEP entry for legal rights, the issue: "Whether legal rights are conceptually related to other types of rights, principally moral rights" [[1]]. We need to talk about what is being inferred here by these two entries being together. I too believe the entries need to separated, as to link them suggests a direct link between legal and moral rights. I do not believe that there is connection, although some people think that there should be. Reason and passion are separate under the law. Edunoramus (talk) 15:31, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Relevance to Thomas Aquinas

I propose that we mention Thomas Aquinas to the article of Natural Rights because I think that Thomas Aquinas' philosophy of the Natural Law, Human Law, Divine Law, and Eternal Law can give a possible basis for what we consider to be Natural Rights. The problem is that Thomas Aquinas, to the best of my knowledge, did not explicitly mention Natural Rights to Life but Jacques Maritain, a Catholic Philosopher, was able to synthesize Thomistic philosophy of Natural Law with the modern demands of Human Rights. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Philonus (talk • contribs) 04:56, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

As I alude to below, I agree that Thomas Aquinas would help fill out this entry. [[2]] Edunoramus (talk) 12:46, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

the sources of Locke's ideas

I removed the speculation about Locke being influenced by medieval Islamic thought. It is well-known (and already mentioned here at wikipedia) that Locke's thought was influenced by Richard Hooker, who imported much of the thought of the medieval Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas into the Anglican church. Furthermore, I think that this article inappropriately emphasizes Locke's connection to "life, liberty and property." This trilogy is simply an elaboration of the natural right to self-preservation. "Life, liberty, and property" was a fundamental element of the English legal tradition, appearing in Magna Carta many centuries before Locke was born. --Other Choices (talk) 23:49, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

These passages were sourced. WP:NPOV means we cannot remove cited statements because we disagree with them. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 02:25, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Now wait a minute... You removed the statements that I added, and my statements were sourced. Do you have any objection to the three statements I added? While we discuss this, I have no objection to keeping the statement that I deleted -- but I do object to your deletions. Even though the speculation about Muslim influence on Locke was sourced, it was a SPECULATION. Is that appropriate in this article? Furthermore, until I came along, the article omitted the well-documented connection between Richard Hooker and both Thomas Aquinas and John Locke -- a connection that is already mentioned elsewhere in wikipedia. Shouldn't that be included? What do you think about these two questions?--Other Choices (talk) 04:05, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

You have cited them now, but before they were uncited. As they stand, they are good. The bit about Muslim influence on Locke is one sentence long, so it doesn't run afoul of WP:UNDUE; we don't remove minority positions because we think they are ill-founded if they have reliable sources. The rest of the paragraph suggests that the distinction between natural and legal rights also has a basis in Islam and is properly cited. I am undoing the correction of the relationship between natural and inalienable rights; even if those who use them interchangeably are "wrong" somehow, they are used interchangeably. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 14:33, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Excuse me, but they were cited before, too. I simply pasted back EXACTLY what you deleted. Also, I re-did my correction of the relationship between natural and inalienable rights -- please discuss this further before undoing it again. I think it is indisputable that, in the discussion of rights through the centuries, certain natural rights -- such as the right to property -- are NOT inalienable. Do you disagree? Also, the bit about Muslim influence on Locke is a scholarly SPECULATION. Once again, I think that such speculation, while it might be appropriate in the Locke article, has no place in this article. Can you please share your thoughts on this. --Other Choices (talk) 22:33, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

On second thought, I see no problem with including the Locke/Muslim reference if there is also included a section on the mainstream development of natural rights thought in medieval western Europe. I'll start to draft such a section and hopefully add it this weekend. --Other Choices (talk) 23:07, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

You're right about the citations: I misread the diff. As to natural and inalienable rights, the question is not whether they are the same. Rather, it is whether some people use "inalienable rights" to refer to "natural rights," ("natural rights, also called ..."). One fast assertion that property, for example, actually is an inalienable right is here. It seems more in keeping with WP:NPOV to say phrase things the old way (describing what some people think are synonyms) rather than to specify the "correct" relationship among natural, moral, and inalienable rights. And the article as a whole is a mess, so adding a section (and reorganizing much of it) would be helpful. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 23:09, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

This article has some big holes in it. American documents as early as 1641 (Massachusetts) had these rights. This was before Locke. The government of Massachusetts used lists from 2 people who derived their lists from English common law, Magna Carta and these were influenced by the Mosaic law in the Bible. This article is sorely in need of content regarding the religious origins of rights and a specific list of documents starting with Magna Carta. Tracing the origins of the common law is very difficult and almost mythical but should be attempted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.199.54.86 (talk) 02:45, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this article has holes. Richard Tuck, in his Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development, discusses medieval uses of the idea of natural rights (the sources are in Latin, of course). Then you have medieval English legal theorists like Bracton, who also uses a phrase that is translated as "natural rights." But I think that the scholarly "gold standard" for discussing the separation of the modern concept of natural rights from the old natural law tradition is Knud Haakonssen's Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment. As Haakonssen's title implies, Grotius is the place to start. One of these days, if nobody beats me to it, I'm going to summarize Haakonssen's views and add them to both this article and the Natural Law article.--Other Choices (talk) 03:18, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

The Relativism Argument

The introduction has a statement on natural rights that reads "...legal rights are culturally and politically relative". I wonder is this so, or is this conjectural? What are the goals of such a statement? It seems to me that by using the term "relative" the author of this statement aims to downplay the role of legal rights and hold up the merit of natural rights. Can anyone clarify here? Can we get a citation that grounds this in a perspective or POV? Edunoramus (talk) 19:36, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

What rights I have by law can change with the law. In some jurisdictions I have a legal right to carry a concealed firearm, in others I do not. What my legal rights are depend entirely upon the jurisdiction. That is what that statement says. I cannot imagine anyone doubting that laws differ from place to place, so I don't think that needs a citations (per WP:V). RJC ^Talk_Contribs 21:12, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

OK. That is a part of the argument and it makes it seem so easily self-evident. However, linking legal rights to Moral relativism is an attempt to make a much larger political argument than the one you just described. Quite often, I have found that the charge of Moral_relativism comes from a position which suggests that in contrast, universal laws exist and should be asserted, as we see in the natural law argument. I am simply requesting that this assertion be supported by a citation. So, I hear you but, who says so? Edunoramus (talk) 00:03, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I think that the link to the moral relativism article should be removed from the introduction - the ethical position that morality is relative and not universal is not relevant to the point that legal rights in fact vary from legal system to legal system. I submit that the new wording should be "Legal rights are those rights created by law (rights created by statute are called statutory rights, rights created by a constitution are called constitutional rights, rights created by the common law are called common law rights) within a particular legal system. Legal rights vary between legal systems." - or a variation that accords with correct Wikipedia style. Moral relativism is relevant to natural rights though - because moral relativism is antithetical to natural rights - but this should be referenced somewhere else or in a different way for the reason above. Moreover, it is incorrect to say that legal rights are culturally relative; although legal rights can be culturally relative (e.g. in the case of mono-cultural nations, or if the legal system provides for it, as in Roman law) legal rights are more often not culturally relative. It is common for two or more cultures to be exist under the same legal system, as in contemporary multicultural societies. 130.216.167.29 (talk) 04:41, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Self-evidence

Regarding self-evidence, this idea began with Jefferson. Locke assumed that most people would not know in the state of nature and had to write a book explaining just what these "self-evident" rights were and what they involved. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 00:12, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Self-evidence doesn't necessarily entail knowledge, it entails truth and/or existence without proof. Whether we realize that we have these natural rights is irrelevant, they're innate and still exist regardless. Locke and Hobbes followed this postulate in regard to natural rights generations before Jefferson. The concept of natural rights being a natural, non-artificial state is common among various natural rights theories. --NINTENDUDE⁶⁴ 15:23, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary, self-evidence does entail knowledge, except among those who have a severe mental defect. Self-evident means more than "axiomatic," but that the evidence for their truth comes immediately with the hearing of them. It is for this reason that much has been written on why Jefferson called these truths "self-evident" when clearly they are not. (Some have suggested that the emphasis is on "we hold," in that we are defined as the people who hold them to be self-evident, even if others do not find them to be so.) The fact that natural rights are natural, not the product of human artifice, while being knowable (if not known) by natural reason is indeed common to all natural rights theories, but not all natural right theorists say that what natural reason discloses is also immediately disclosed, without any strenuous effort. Hobbes and Locke are included in this. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 17:04, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I concur with RJC. --Pfhorrest (talk) 17:39, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Cicero, at the beginning of De Officiis, a book universally studied as part of colonial American secondary education, used the phrase (in Latin, of course), "these truths are so self-evident that the subject does not call for discussion," referring to his condemnation of a what we might call a "Lockean" definition of good and evil.--Other Choices (talk) 03:01, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

However, with regard to the intellectual history of the term "self-evidence" and the above arguments that seek to ground it, I would like to suggest that the state of nature argument has never been settled and it likely will not ever be. So, if that is the case, where does that leave us with regard to settling this idea of "self-evidence" as actually proven, settled or verifiable? It is not just mere POV at the time? Edunoramus (talk) 01:08, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

There is not a POV issue here because we are not asserting anything about the truth. The question was what others have written and whether we can read notions of "self-evidence" everywhere we find mention of "natural rights." RJC ^Talk_Contribs 05:23, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

OK. But what about the basis of the claim of "self-evidence" itself? In the context where these claims to self-evidence are made, natural rights are deemed to be ordained by God. So, I believe that this conception of "natural", should be forthrightly stated. It seems to me that the whole basis of Aquinas' [[3]] claim to divine providence and "the eternal" would make things a lot clearer in terms of the overt religiosity at work in the basis of this claim to "self-evidence".Edunoramus (talk) 12:40, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

It is not true that all advocates of self-evident natural rights claimed they were ordained by God, so putting this in there would cause the same problems as saying that they derive from our humanity, discussed above. Aquinas is mentioned in natural law. The modern natural rights tradition is largely a reaction against Thomistic conceptions of natural law. The subject of this article is the distinction between natural and legal rights, not everything that we can say about either one of these, and I'm not sure what Aquinas adds to that. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 13:44, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Here's the problem as I see it. The claim to legal rights has a basis in law. The claim to natural rights has a basis in... what? The claim here, as it has been outlined, is it's self-evidence but what if one does not see (or give credence to) the evidence? One can claim natural rights to be self-evident only in so far as it is enforceable, so on what basis are natural rights enforceable? The same claim can be made for human rights because, outside of the basis of law, which for me, is not enforceable beyond the boundaries of a nation, we are left with same problem. Who enforces such "rights"? The UN? We have seen how successful this has been. There is an extent to which we are deluding ourselves, I think. We need to be clear here about the basis of the argument of self-evidence because I do not see it as self-evident at all, I see it as hegemonic imposition. Edunoramus (talk) 15:08, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

This page is not for a discussion of the truth of the matter, but for the article. We do not claim that natural rights are or are not self-evident, only that some people said that they were, others that they were not. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 15:17, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Natural rights under a socialist dictatorship?

"The phrase can also be found in Chapter III, Article 13 of the 1947 Constitution of Japan, and in President Ho Chi Minh's 1945 declaration of independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam."

This is absurd, besides the obvious ideological contradiction for a socialist state to recognize the natural rights of any individual there is no source to verify the claim.

Im removing it until someone can prove this. 200.30.244.178 (talk) 12:25, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I reverted your deletion, which had no edit summary, before I noticed you had addressed this on the Talk page. Here is a source for the use of natural rights wording in the Vietnamese declaration, which I will also add to the main article. Please note that your opinion on whether socialist states grant any rights is irrelevant, because the significance here is the use of the language, not its implementation. Jonathanwallace (talk) 14:04, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I assume you mean this quote:

"For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent country-and in fact is so already. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty."

However in this speech the right to private property is not explicitly or implicitly defended. As a matter of fact one could argue the Ho Chi Mihn is advocating for the opposite deliberately avoiding any reference to the individual rights and making a case for the "collective rights" of the vietnamese nation. 200.30.244.178 (talk) 04:35, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Nope, I mean this quote in the first sentence of the document: ""All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Its presence in the article is as part of a list of documents which echo the language of the US Declaration of Independence, which it does.Jonathanwallace (talk) 05:01, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I know the Declaration of Independence of the US, I memorized it years ago.

Anyway, the quote about the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (property) explicitly referes to the rights of every individual, however the vietnamese document is considerably more ambiguous stating that the people will sacrifice their lives and property for their "independence and liberty".

Naturally that raises suspicions about the intent of the words behind this document even though it openly declares it sought vietnamese "liberty". 200.30.244.178 (talk) 05:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

All of which constitutes your own synthesis of the material, which is not appropriate in editing Wikipedia. The existing reference is appropriate and informative and should not be removed. Jonathanwallace (talk) 05:28, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The Issue of Conjoinment

Can someone explain to me why it has been deemed necessary to conjoin natural and legal rights? It would seem to me that they are two very different concepts and thus, are deserving of separate Wikipedia entries, unless of course, there is the argument to be made that natural rights are legal rights or vice versa?

To me natural rights and legal rights are very different and I am not familiar with their direct interrelationship. Anyone care to enlighten me? Edunoramus (talk) 00:53, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

The point of this article is to compare and contrast rights of a natural or moral nature, and rights of a legal or positive nature. Compare the articles Negative and positive rights, Claim rights and liberty rights, and Individual and group rights. Each member of each of those pairs is defined in contrast to the other member of that pair; a negative right is a right which is not positive, and positive right is a right which is not negative, for instance. There being an article on "Negative and positive rights" does not imply that we are claiming they are the same; likewise with this article, which I think is made fairly clear in the first few sentences. Did you even read the lede to this article, or just the title? --Pfhorrest (talk) 19:55, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

The splitting of Legal right

User:Blue-Haired Lawyer recently split out a new article at Legal right. I have revived that article's old talk page and posted my concerns with this action, and would appreciate it if anyone watching this article would join in the conversation at Talk:Legal_right#Split_again.3F. Thanks, --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:24, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Unalienable vs inalienable - some legal precedents define differences between the two

Unalienable: incapable of being alienated, that is, sold and transferred." Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, page 1523:

You can not surrender, sell or transfer unalienable rights, they are a gift from the creator to the individual and can not under any circumstances be surrendered or taken. All individual's have unalienable rights.

Inalienable rights: Rights which are not capable of being surrendered or transferred without the consent of the one possessing such rights. Morrison v. State, Mo. App., 252 S.W.2d 97, 101.

You can surrender, sell or transfer inalienable rights if you consent either actually or constructively. Inalienable rights are not inherent in man and can be alienated by government. Persons have inalienable rights. Most state constitutions recognize only inalienable rights.

97.85.168.22 (talk) 11:10, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

If the Missouri Court of Appeals in 1952 did not know how to speak English, that is not evidence of the word's usage. To say nothing of the fact that, from I can gather from a Google search, this was a gun case. In Missouri. In 1952. Was Morrison by any chance black? RJC ^Talk_Contribs 14:52, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

legal awareness

You are well come to contribute and improve article legal awareness.

Mahitgar (talk) 12:40, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Separation of Natural Rights from Legal Rights

There is no basis for the term "legal rights" and this article should be about natural rights only. By definition, rights cannot be granted, which is the concept described by the erroneous term, otherwise privileges. The concept of the social contract has a place in the article, as it is a collective decision to yield to the government for the purpose of protecting rights, not to have it grant rights (which is an impossibility). Therefore this article should be discontinued, moving most of the content back to the Natural rights article, save for the incorrect injection of the concept of legal rights. Eodcarl (talk) 07:17, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) User:Eodcarl recently removed all mention of legal rights from a variety of rights-related articles with comments such as "There is no basis for a concept of legal rights" and "No such thing as legal rights". Carl (if I may call you that), while depending on what you mean I might agree with you personally, there is very clearly a large contingent of people who believe in the existence and legitimacy of legal rights, and even if they are wrong, it is still a notable concept that needs coverage on wikipedia. You will need to make a very strong case if you want all mention of legal rights removed from the entire encyclopedia. --Pfhorrest (talk) 07:20, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

The article uses the major philosophers (Hobbes, Locke, etc.) as the basis, even though none of them suggested such a concept. If they want to have a page for the idea of legal rights, fine, but Natural rights, a much more mature philosophy should not be lumped together with a term like "legal rights" which has no basis in political science circles, and there are no citations in the article for it. It seems it was literally invented for Wikipedia, whereas natural rights has a solid, long history. Eodcarl (talk) 07:29, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I didn't answer your request last night; you can call me whatever you want, just don't call me late for dinner! Now that I've had a little time to think about it, my position is the same, but it is not only the controversial nature of legal rights that suggests it should not be in this article. It was dumbfounding to see the unchallenged statement of the opposite claim that the concept of legal right not being controversial, but I digress. I believe they should be separate article because they are in no way related. I suggest undoing the redirect from natural rights to the Natural and legal rights article (and delete the combined article or rename it Legal rights) and allowing someone to develop the stand-alone legal rights article. As it stands right now, the concept of legal rights appears to be standing on the shoulders of the natural rights philosophers; if there is going to be an article for legal rights, it should to stand on its own. Eodcarl (talk) 14:37, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

The existence of legal rights is entirely uncontroversial: there are laws which say that people have rights, and that's all a legal right is, a right according to the law. The normative legitimacy of such things is a different matter entirely, and I suspect that I agree with you there -- making a declaration in law cannot create an actual normative obligation or permission or so on -- but that is a controversial matter where there will be argument. That is essentially the argument about political legitimacy. Your assertions that rights cannot be granted is one I agree with, but not an uncontroversial one; there are many people who dispute that natural rights view and argue that all rights are "merely" legal rights.

The reason we have one article on "natural and legal rights" is because the material we had on each was entirely about distinguishing them from the other, much like negative and positive rights. The article about natural rights was all about what makes a right a "real" natural one instead of just an "empty" declaration of law. The article about legal rights was mostly a copy of an old version of the article Rights, and when that duplication was cleared up there was nothing left but a small bit of material distinguishing it from natural rights, which was entirely redundant with the natural rights article and its lengthy distinction of natural rights from mere legal rights, so the two were merged. --Pfhorrest (talk) 20:41, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

The entire concept of legal rights is rights granted by government, so I'm not sure why you can state so assuredly that it is not controversial. One cannot just simply state such a thing to make it true, and as someone with a degree in the subject and having studied it for many years, I know it is quite controversial. If someone doesn't have a right independent of government, it is not a right, and to claim a privilege is the same thing as a right is pretty far out there. It needs to stand on its own; right now the article is written as if Locke, Hobbes, and Paine can be used as support for legal rights, even though none of them even suggested such a thing. A social contract set up to protect rights is not controversial, however. Eodcarl (talk) 22:31, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

A part of me wants to engaged in the conversation, so first I'll say that it is irrelevant whether legal rights actually exist—it violates WP:NPOV to say that they do not. As to their existence, they certainly exist. There is no "natural right" to start a limited liability corporation (since you can't waive your liability no matter how many other investors you conspire with to do so). If you fill out the proper forms and submit the fee, however, any clerk that refuses to issue you a corporate charter has done you a wrong which you can remedy in court. There certainly are some legal rights that have no basis in natural law or the natural rights of man. On the contrary, it is the existence of natural rights that is disputed. Even granting the existence of natural rights, the question of whether particular rights are natural or legal does not yield an answer on which authorities agree and so has to be addressed in a neutral fashion. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 00:13, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

If it is a violation of WP:NPOV to say there is no such thing as legal rights, it must also be a violation to say there is such a thing, not to mention WP:NPOV does not apply to the TALK page. I have no issue with your example of an LLC; what you have described is a privilege and I agree there is not a natural right to form one. The other issue you pose actually is derivative of a natural right, equal protection under the law. After all, the 14th Amendment was not the invention of a new right, but recognition of a natural right that had been violated by government and the collective up to that point (and certainly in practice afterwards). The problem with renaming privileges to legal rights is it does not conform to a key characteristic of a right, which is it is not granted by government or any individual or collective human choice. We can disagree all day long on these points, but it makes no sense for the two unrelated subjects to be merged into the same article. I have a degree in the subject, and this article is the first place I've ever seen the term "legal rights" in any pseudo-scholarly setting. There could certainly be a legal rights page, but the writers of it would have to find philosophers who articulated it, whoever that might be. I would certainly defer on assisting with the content since I certainly do not have a NPOV on it. Eodcarl (talk) 00:38, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Dear Eodcarl: With all due respect, the assertion that the term "legal rights" was somehow invented for Wikipedia is absurd, as is the assertion that the term has "no basis in political science circles."

Further, legal philosophers use the term all the time, as does the public at large.

Wikipedia is probably not the place for you to publish your own views. Instead, look for reliable, previously published third party sources, and report on what those sources say -- with proper citations to the sources. Famspear (talk) 01:19, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

As I said, I have a degree in the subject, and no it is not used "all the time." Laypeople say erroneous things like "the Constitution grants the right to..." all the time. That doesn't mean it is scholarly, belonging in an article. I am not promoting my own views, and I'm sure you didn't intend to offend, you were simply mistaken. As I said, we can disagree on the legitimacy of the term, but no one is making the case for it to piggy-back on the Natural Rights page. There are no citations supporting the "legal rights" assertions on the page. I've been told just to accept it as not controversial. I did jump the gun on splitting the topics, but now I've made the case the topics don't belong in the same article, and no one has made the case they do belong together. Eodcarl (talk) 01:38, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Dear Eodcarl: You have twice claimed to have a degree in "the subject." You don't say what "the subject" is. Natural rights? Political science? Law? A quick search of scholarly articles (Harvard Law Review, etc.) using the precise phrase "legal rights" turns up about 613,000 hits. A quick search of primary source legal materials (case law -- the actual verbatim texts of court decisions) turns up about 493,000 hits. Yes, you're being told to accept the use of the phrase "legal rights" as non-controversial. It's a very common term, and it's used by legal scholars every day. Famspear (talk) 02:07, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

My degree is in political science. That a search term gets a lot of search engine hits is not evidence of something being non-controversial. There is plenty of dispute regarding the belief rights can be granted, but I digress. I am not advocating "legal rights" be banned from Wikipedia. I am proposing splitting it from the wholly unrelated Natural Rights article. Eodcarl (talk) 16:45, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Dear Eodcarl: No, you wrote, "There is no basis for the term 'legal rights'". That is incorrect.

There is no serious controversy over the point that the term "legal rights" is used by legal scholars every day. Further, "getting a lot of search engine hits" -- in this case, hundreds of thousands of them -- is most definitely evidence that legal scholars use the term all the time.

You also wrote, "It [the term 'legal rights'] seems it was literally invented for Wikipedia, whereas [the term] natural rights has a solid, long history." That is quite wrong.

The fact that the term "legal rights" is used in hundreds of thousands of scholarly articles and formal legal documents is most certainly overwhelming evidence that the term was not "invented for Wikipedia." There is no serious "controversy" that the term is a real term, has various real meanings for scholars, and that the use of the term in this particular article is not properly the subject of any serious controversy.

Further, the concept of "legal rights" is most definitely related -- closely related -- to the concept of "natural rights." There is no compelling reason to remove the term "legal rights" from this article. Famspear (talk) 18:50, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

PS: Of course, almost no article is perfect. Various Wikipedia editors will continue to try to improve the article. Famspear (talk) 18:57, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

I conceded the point to disagree on the validity of legal rights vs. calling it what it really is, privileges. I'll give you benefit of the doubt that you didn't see I conceded that point, and asked nicely not to argue about it anymore. However, there is no basis in the article for including "legal rights" in the natural rights article, and there is certainly nothing in the article to support combining them. Beyond that, the article uses Locke, Hobbes, and Paine, among others to support legal rights which is quite wrong. It is incumbent upon you (or someone else) to make a case to keep it combined. I am considering merging the Apple and Orange_(fruit) articles. That makes about as much sense as this article. As an aside, it is a NPOV violation for an article to outright state something is not controversial, since it is always a jab at those who disagree, with the intent to bully detractors into silence. There is no reason for an article to state that. Also, please properly indent your talk page entries. Eodcarl (talk) 19:59, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Dear Eodcarl: I am properly indenting my talk page entries. At some point, we go back to the left margin. That's what I did. And that's what I'm doing again.

No, it is not "incumbent upon me" -- or upon "somebody else" -- to make a case to keep the two terms in this article. You don't make the rules here, and the rest of us are not under some sort of burden to satisfy you. You're the editor proposing a change; it's "incumbent" on you to persuade your fellow editors. Wikipedia works on the concept of consensus. Famspear (talk) 20:27, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Dear Eodcarl: I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say that it is an NPOV violation to "outright state something is not controversial...." I did a search of the article, and I found these two statements (excerpted here):

(1) "While the existence of legal rights has always been uncontroversial, the idea that certain rights are natural or inalienable also has a history...."

(2) "....there is still much dispute over which "rights" are truly natural rights and which are not, and the concept of natural or inalienable rights is still controversial to some."

Perhaps you are referring to statement 1??? (I notice that neither statement is clearly sourced.) Famspear (talk) 20:33, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Bringing my proposed edits to the talk page is a courtesy unless there is reasoned dispute over it. I have offered my reasons for splitting the articles and I've received no reason not to do so in response. You don't make the rules here either, and you're talking to me as if I'm on the outside looking in. I am well aware of Wikipedia guidelines. Both statements are inappropriate, because both are advancing a POV, stated in such a way to dissuade anyone from challenging it. Go ahead and keep the combined article. I will work on the natural rights pure article. Eodcarl (talk) 21:10, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

You have been given reasons in response. You may not like them, but you have been given them. You were bold, you were reverted, and now discussion is taking place, and you don't get to unanimously decide that the discussion is over and in your favor. What you have created now is a POV fork which is not allowed on Wikipedia. I am going to revert your changes again and we can continue discussing things here until a new consensus is established; so far, every editor to comment on your changes has disagreed with them and offered reasons for doing so, so you have quite a while to go before you can claim consensus in favor of your position. --Pfhorrest (talk) 06:37, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

And just to summarize the points of the argument so far: there is very clear evidence, as well argued by Famspear, that the concept of "legal rights" is widely used by legal scholars. The reason why we have an article on "natural and legal rights" is because the discussion of natural rights is largely about distinguishing them from "merely" legal rights, and the only material we had about legal rights was in distinguishing them from natural rights, so a combined article discussing that distinction, akin to other articles like Negative and positive rights, is only logical.

You may have some points to make about the content of this article. Maybe we shouldn't say the existence of legal rights is uncontroversial, if that could be misread as saying their legitimacy or rightness or some such is uncontroversial (which I will agree it is not, noting figures such as Aquinas who held that laws not grounded in natural law were mere facades of law and not binding, or something to that extent). And the article could probably use more and better citations. Your claim that natural rights theorists are being cited to "support legal rights" seems to be just complaining that this article, which discusses both concepts, features such figures, unless you can point out a passage where we put incorrect opinions about legal rights into their mouths, in which case yeah, that should be fixed.

But none of that is a reason to create a POV fork. You will need to build a consensus that either legal rights should not be covered anywhere at all on Wikipedia (good luck with that), or that natural rights and legal rights need to be covered in separate articles despite the content of both of those articles being largely about the same distinction between the two concepts. --Pfhorrest (talk) 06:53, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

This reminds me of a discussion we had years ago about what to call the article and whether to have a separate natural rights article (I can't find where). There, the question was not substantive, i.e., whether legal rights properly speaking have any existence at all. Rather, it turned on the way that this article fits in with Wikipedia's other articles. This article is part of a series covering conceptual distinctions, including claim rights and liberty rights, individual and group rights, and negative and positive rights. These concepts are discussed in A and B articles because neither A nor B can be discussed without reference to the other. Explaining what natural rights are is best done by saying that they are not legal rights, and vice versa, just as positive and negative rights are clarified by contradistinction. You can say that only natural rights exist or qualify as rights, but that statement is senseless unless you already have in your head some idea of what legal rights would be if they existed. And, as I said above, legal rights do exist. (The distinction between rights and privileges is largely meaningless. The last place I heard the distinction relied upon was decades ago in driver's ed. No one would say that the Comity Clause protects your privileges from state interference, but not your rights.) RJC ^Talk_Contribs 14:15, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Debate section

In unrelated matters, it strikes me that the Debate section which grew here since I last paid close attention to this article could stand to be integrated into the surrounding sections, "Natural rights theories" above or "History" below, as those all discuss the debates surrounding them already. --Pfhorrest (talk) 07:00, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Rights documents section, and rebalancing the article

Some of the above controversy makes me question the need for the "Legal rights documents" section (currently renamed "Natural and legal rights documents"). The purpose of that section was to be starter material for more discussion about legal rights (in the sense of rights that you have according to the law, regardless of whether there are natural rights backing them or not), so that the article wouldn't be entirely about theories of natural rights. I imagined it would be expanded into a discussion of... something, I'm not sure what, about legal rights, more extensive than just "various laws declare various things to be rights". However, I'm now questioning the use of that section in this article; if anything, it might be better moved into just the general Rights article (and the latter used to have such a thing before it was removed for redundancy with here).

I think it would be better to refocus the balance of this article not on "here are theories according to which we have various [natural] rights, and here charters according to which we have various [legal] rights", but instead on "here are arguments about the existence or non-existence of natural rights", and "here are arguments about the validity or invalidity of legal rights". Possibly all rolled into one, not necessarily broken out into two sections. The lede could then list those two controversies: are there any natural rights at all, in which legal rights could be grounded; and can legal rights have any normative force at all, without natural rights to ground them in?

I imagine Eodcarl would probably be very happy to dig up some authors discussing the latter topic, yes? Would anyone else object to that? --Pfhorrest (talk) 22:08, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't have any issues with that; it is probably the right way to go. Hopefully enough people in good faith agree to remove the unnecessary "uncontroversial" bit. I don't want to set up a quid pro quo, but that wording is really bothersome to me, as a poke in the eye, as if to say, don't dare question this statement because the people already here decided it is not to be questioned. Beyond that, I would be glad to contribute to the new take on the section. Eodcarl (talk) 23:53, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, although I think the arguments casting doubt on the validity of legal rights Pfhorrest pointed to are essentially those casting doubt in the normative authority of government in general. We don't want this to become a fork of anarchism or legitimacy (political). I think there is more to be said about the existence of natural rights. At any rate, that discussion has a greater "market share" of scholarly debates. Addressing the existence of legal rights at great length also runs the risk of making this an article about some flavor of anarchism, rather than clarifying to lay readers how the terms "natural rights" and "legal rights" are used by scholars. RJC ^Talk_Contribs

Good point that we want to avoid duplication of articles like legitimacy (political), but I do think there is some ground on which to talk about questions of political legitimacy as they stem from natural rights arguments. I believe Eodcarl has the spirit of Paine down correctly there, and I earlier mentioned Aquinas as another in that camp (though he was speaking of natural law, not natural rights per se, but they are closely related subjects at least). I would like to see Eodcarl come up with some proposed content from sources like those questioning the legitimacy of attempts to create or destroy rights by legal fiat.

Note however (for Eodcarl) that this is not the same thing as questioning "the existence of legal rights" in the sense that the article uses throughout, the sense which means "the evident fact that there are laws declaring such-and-such to be a right or not". The question over the existence of natural rights is whether or not there is anything declared to be a right "by nature" somehow. People who question the existence of natural rights are saying, "Ok, if nature says I have such-and-such rights, where in nature is that written down? Where can I go to find them? How can I know what they are?" Nobody asks a question like that about legal rights: you just pull up a law book for your jurisdiction and look it up and bam, those are the rights which you have according to the law. Now the law may be wrong and maybe you don't really have those rights, or you have others it says you don't have, so there's a separate question about the legitimacy of legal rights, but there is no question about their existence in the same sense that people question the existence of natural rights. And conversely, to my knowledge nobody who agrees about the existence of natural rights questions their legitimacy; it's taken for granted that, if they exist at all, they are legitimate by their very nature. And conversely it's taken for granted that legal rights obviously exist, whether or not they are legitimate. Does everyone see the two different kinds of questions here and agree with this distinction?

As the person who wrote that "uncontroversial" statement Eodcarl object to, I'm fine with rewording it in a way that makes the above distinction more clear, if everyone else is. Perhaps pairing it with another sentence introducing the material I asked him to whip up above. Although, looking at where in the article that is placed, I think it's only there as a kind of explanation of why the history section is only talking about natural rights, and there isn't much history to speak of regarding legal rights. I'm going to be bold and just remove that introductory clause since it serves no purpose and is just causing a fuss. I'm also going to be bold and remove the "documents" section as I suggested above, and merge anything missing from it into the corresponding section in the article Rights.

I propose that we work on reorganizing most of what's already in this article -- the "Natural rights theories" section, the "Debate" section, and the "History" section -- into a section about the question of whether natural rights exist and if so what they are, broken down into chronological period sections and then into sections by prominent authors in those periods. I may take a rough pass at that myself in a moment. Then we can work on building up a section about the question of whether legal rights are legitimate, possibly pulling some material out of that combined section, and hopefully adding some material that perhaps Eodcarl can round up? --Pfhorrest (talk) 04:52, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I went ahead and did everything I mentioned here. The merger into one continuous History section is very rough for the moment and I intend to come back and clean it up (e.g. Locke and Hobbes are discussed in plain prose paragraphs in the main body of the Modern History section, as well as having their own sections; those could stand to be integrated together), but I need to run for now; anyone else, please feel free to get a head start on that or to rearrange things within there as you see fit. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:10, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Why does the link to the Russian text send to the article "Устав" ("Articles of association")?

How did it happen? And what can be done to repair this? Eozhik (talk) 17:21, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Uncontroversial?

I have been beaten into submission regarding the duality of this article, so I've decided to try to make the article better. RJC reverted my removal of the POV wording claiming the existence legal rights always being uncontroversial. I haven't persuaded editors here of much, but Pfhorrest agreed the wording should probably go. In the revert RJC said "The sense of these edits is contrary to the sense expressed by the majority of editors on the talk page." That is a POV, not a statement in support of whether a clearly POV statement should be in the article. Those two statements present legal rights as accepted fact and natural rights as a controversial theory, at best. I did not flip the article in the opposite POV, I simply removed weasel wording. My edit should be restored. Eodcarl (talk) 15:39, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on legal rights has a number of questions that have to be addressed—the existence of legal rights is not one of them. That was the first hit for a Google search for there are no legal rights. I can't find anything else that would suggest that any scholar doubts the existence of legal rights. I think it is fair to say that their existence was generally taken as obvious and that it was the existence of natural rights that had to be established. I'm going to ask for a scholarly source saying that there are no legal rights, one that does not run afoul of WP:FRINGE, before concluding that there is a real debate here such that WP:NPOV would militate against the current phrasing. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 18:27, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I had just read that article. It is one point of view. I'm not sure why you can't find anything else that disputes legal rights; it is all over this very article, articulated by the premier natural rights philosophers, Hobbes, Locke, and Paine.

Examples:

1) Hobbes: In his natural state, according to Hobbes, man's life consisted entirely of liberties and not at all of laws;

2) Locke: The social contract is an agreement between members of a country to live within a shared system of laws. Specific forms of government are the result of the decisions made by these persons acting in their collective capacity. Government is instituted to make laws that protect these three natural rights.

3) Thomas Paine (1731–1809) further elaborated on natural rights in his influential work Rights of Man (1791), emphasizing that rights cannot be granted by any charter because this would legally imply they can also be revoked and under such circumstances they would be reduced to privileges.

Unless someone were to contend these three philosophers and their ideas were long ago relegated to the trash bin of history, the existence of legal rights is in enough dispute to be considered at least moderately controversial. To say otherwise is to say I am all alone in the belief governments cannot grant rights, which is what legal rights would be. If a reader comes to this article for the first time, and read its from beginning to end, one will learn that Hobbes, Locke, and Paine all believed in natural rights and the social contract to protect them, but that the resulting government doesn't grant rights, but protects them. Then, they get further down in the article and are faced with a statement that roughly says what those philosophers are wrong, but that is uncontroversial.

The next thing I'd ask you to consider is what is the purpose of deliberately stating something is not controversial? The whole point of this article, as it has been explained to me, is to pair competing philosophies, and low and behold, there is even a section called Debate. I won't accuse someone of including that language to shut off discussion, but either way, it smacks of weasel wording. There are clearly those who believe there are no natural rights, and there are those who believe rights cannot be granted by one, the few, or the collective (legal rights). That is controversy, and the article should merely describe the competing philosophies, and how some reconcile both. Eodcarl (talk) 19:18, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Dear Eodcarl: None of the material you quoted says that these philosophers denied the existence of LEGAL rights, if that's what you're driving at. Please re-read the material. Famspear (talk) 20:38, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, all three do, and the Paine passage quite deliberately states it: "rights cannot be granted by any charter because this would legally imply they can also be revoked and under such circumstances they would be reduced to privileges." Perhaps you can tell how much more blatantly it has to be stated, then perhaps we can come to some mutual understanding. I have provided plenty showing there is disagreement. Beyond that, the weasel language of deliberately stating something is uncontroversial with no added value to the article should go even if there was consensus of it being uncontroversial. Eodcarl (talk) 21:06, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Just as I thought: You're misreading. The phrase "rights cannot be granted" is a reference to NATURAL rights, not legal rights. You're "reading in" the phrase "legal rights," but the phrase you should be reading in is "natural rights." Famspear (talk) 21:22, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Eodcarl: Go back to the basic concepts. What these philosophers were saying was that NATURAL rights are God-given -- that such rights cannot be "given" by government. What these philosophers were NOT saying (at least in the material you're presenting) was that LEGAL rights are God-given. Famspear (talk) 21:26, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

That is not my understanding natural rights or the philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Paine. Natural rights are not necessarily dependent on God; the proposition is that we have inalienable rights as a simple matter of existence, OR granted by God. Adherents of the belief in the existence of natural rights need not agree on one of two sources; They need only agree natural rights exist and they cannot be taken away. It is a huge stretch to equate rights being granted by God to rights being granted by government. Do you disagree with this definition of legal rights from the article?: "legal rights are those bestowed onto a person by a given legal system." That is exactly what Thomas Paine says does not exist in the passage I have quoted twice. The fact that we're have a disagreement about it is proof it is controversial. I agree with Tom Paine. Eodcarl (talk) 21:47, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

No, you agree with your own interpretation of what Paine wrote. What you need to do is to find a place where Paine (or some other reliable source) argued that legal rights do not exist. Famspear (talk) 21:52, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

PS: Whether based on "God" or "nature" or whatever, the point is that the philosophers generally argued that natural rights were not something granted by government, and were not something that could be taken away. By contrast, I have seen nothing in the material that you cited where Paine (or anyone else) supposedly argued that LEGAL rights do not exist.

Yes, legal rights, generally speaking, are rights granted through a legal system, through a governmental system.

Yes, it is a huge stretch to equate rights being granted by God (natural rights) to rights being granted by government (legal rights). You're having a problem understanding what Paine wrote. You're assuming that in the passage I quoted, he was talking about one kind of right when he was talking about the other. Famspear (talk) 21:59, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Since you're the expert, knowing what he actually meant, what does this mean?: "It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights." If you're suggesting I find a quote of one of them using a term not yet coined in their day, you got me, I can't do that. Apparently it is your contention that Paine was saying a core set of natural rights can't be granted by government, though he clearly did not caveat, merely saying rights. Eodcarl (talk) 22:14, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Dear Eodcarl: What he means is: "It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter [such as a statute or other man-made law] gives NATURAL rights."

You're misreading it as: "It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter [such as a statute or other man-made law] gives LEGAL rights." That's not what he's saying. Famspear (talk) 22:24, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I guess since you can put extra words in Thomas Paine's mouth, we are at an impasse. Perhaps Pfhorrest will opine. Eodcarl (talk) 22:31, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I think there is an impasse here. Paine's remarks plainly say what Famspear says they do. On my talk page you also doubted that there were reliable sources that suggest that natural rights have been criticized for falling prey to the naturalistic fallacy. It is clear that you want the article to reflect The Truth. I do not think that it can do so without violating WP:NPOV, which requires that we present mainstream scholarly disputes honestly without taking sides. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 22:40, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

RJC, you are not representing accurately what I said about why I removed that passage. I was just cleaning up the article of a passage with a five year old call for a citation, which is the reason I stated when I removed it and on your talk page. I have no opinion on the passage one way or the other. I'm not sure what you mean by "The Truth." I agree in the article we should take sides, which is exactly why the "has always been uncontroversial" bit should go. I disagree with your assessment of what Paine had to say, further evidenced by this passage from the Rights of Man, Part 4: "Every generation is equal in rights to generations which preceded it, by the same rule that every individual is born equal in rights with his contemporary." If he supposedly believed in legal rights, how do reconcile that with this quote? If everyone has had the same rights throughout time and among contemporaries around the world, how can government grant rights to some, but not to those who live elsewhere, and not to those who came before? Eodcarl (talk) 23:01, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Dear Eodcarl: No, you're interpreting Paine one way, by adding a certain word -- the word "legal." I'm pointing out that you're wrong. I'm pointing out that when Paine uses the term "rights" in that passage, he is referring to NATURAL rights, not LEGAL rights. Your interpretation makes no sense. Mine makes perfect sense. Again, go back to the definition of a natural right. That's exactly what Paine is talking about -- natural rights. Famspear (talk) 22:46, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I found another passage from The Rights of Man that indicates a couple of things. First, Paine does not speak of rights in the generic and mean natural rights. This is the most important part because it completely invalidates Famspears contention that Paine means natural rights when he simply says rights above. I have proven Paine does not fail to caveat when appropriate, so it can be inferred that when he says only rights, he means all rights. Second, he nowhere acknowledges a power of government to grant rights of any kind.

"Hitherto we have spoken only (and that but in part) of the natural rights of man. We have now to consider the civil rights of man, and to show how the one originates from the other. Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured. His natural rights are the foundation of all his civil rights. But in order to pursue this distinction with more precision, it will be necessary to mark the different qualities of natural and civil rights.

A few words will explain this. Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection." http://www.ushistory.org/PAINE/rights/c1-013.htm

Paine does introduce the concept of civil rights; some might erroneously claim he means it to be synonymous with legal rights but that is quickly debunked by reading Paine's explanation. Civil rights derive directly from natural rights for purposes of living in society, and they are not granted by government. By the description, the right to keep and bear arms would be a good example of a civil right as described by Paine. Equivocate away. Eodcarl (talk) 00:43, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

It would still be a civil right, the natural right (or human right, or unalienable right) at the root of that civil right is the 'right to defend you self.' Civil rights are derived from membership in a civil society (aka legal rights - change nationality and your civil rights change), human rights (aka natural rights aka unalienable rights) are derived from being human, and private rights are derived from membership in a private organization or the working of private contracts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ChristopherTheodore (talk • contribs) 03:21, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm trying to enjoy my holiday weekend and not get bogged down in this all the time, but a brief comment: I believe Paine's passage in question is meant, in what I think is the spirit of Eodcarl's point, to denigrate the normative validity of supposed rights supposedly granted by law: to say that the law does not have the power to actually create or remove something which is legitimately a right; in short, to say that non-natural, merely legal rights are "not real rights" in a sense. That is different from saying that the law does not declare such-and-such to be a right. This is I think the important matter in the dispute here: the difference between "legal rights exist" as meaning "there are laws which declare some things to be rights", and "legal rights exist" as meaning "there are laws which create genuine inviolable normative claims/obligations/etc". The article (attempts to) speak of "legal rights" in the former sense, and in that sense there is no controversy: there are laws which declare some things to be rights, without question. In the latter sense there is plenty of controversy: sure there are laws making such declarations, but what normative weight do they carry? We could perhaps do well to clarify the different senses meant in the article to avoid people like Eodcarl thinking things are being said that aren't meant. --Pfhorrest (talk) 00:43, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

It seems the way to do that is to remove the gratuitous "this has long not been controversial" business. Does it serve a valid purpose in the article? Considering whether or not one believes Paine said otherwise, there are plenty of people who believe something the government can give and take away is not a right, but a privilege. That does not preclude describing both and including points of debate and criticism. With the current "uncontroversial" statement without citation, the article says to a reader it is a point not up for debate. It currently expresses a POV. Eodcarl (talk) 00:54, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

My two cents: if there is argument among editors about what Paine actually meant, then perhaps we should focus on what mainstream reliable sources say about Paine's views on this particular subject. I don't think that any philosopher has ever denied the existence of legal rights in a society that has legal institutions. (And I'm willing to bet that any philosopher whose views on the subject have been preserved came from a society that has legal institutions. It's kind of silly to imagine an illiterate savage in some "state of nature" discoursing on the non-existence of legal rights. Hobbes's views on the non-existence of legal rights in a state of nature were influenced by his living through the English Civil War, when legal institutions broke down temporarily, throwing civilized men into a virtual state of nature with no legal protection. But Hobbes never stated as a general principle that legal rights don't exist.)Other Choices (talk) 04:55, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Other, no one has commented at all on the most recent passage from The Rights of Man I posted. Pfhorrest was not responding to it; there was an edit conflict as we were trying to post at the same time. The passage is pretty cut and dry regarding Paine's stance, in addition it refutes the earlier claims made by others about what he "meant to say." You also said legal philosophers would not deny legal rights in a society with legal institutions; that does not follow logically or historically. The three philosophers of note all wrote in a time when no government on earth even acknowledged the rights of the individual at all, and those governments only infringed rights. Why would they deny something that was not even part of their paradigm? You suggest with the "savage" comment that the distinction is between government and no government, or even that I'm saying government with the consent of the governed can't bestow privileges. I am not saying that at all.

I am saying:

1)Paine, and others, did advocate government with the consent of the government, WITH legal protection of existing rights. They all recognized individual rights were not worth much without a means to defend them, which led to the civil rights Paine mentions, being those rights associated with living in society, but derive directly from natural rights; even the civil rights are not granted; they are only protected by rule of law.

2) There is controversy surrounding the term legal rights, or at least the concept it describes being labeled a right vs. a privilege (and Paine says exactly that, so I am getting frustrated with people being coy about that). The term "legal rights" erases the line between rights and privileges, which is certainly controversial.

3) Saying "the existance of legal rights has always been uncontroversial" is gratuitous, serves no purpose in the article, and serves to tell a reader everyone agrees rights, versus privileges, can be bestowed by government. I have come to find the majority of the interested editors have the POV that rights can be bestowed by government, and defending the "uncontroversial" wording is in defense of that POV. Eodcarl (talk) 13:33, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not going to wade into the dispute over what Paine says, because I think it's irrelevant. However, I would be willing to discuss what reliable sources say about Paine's views on natural versus legal rights.

I'm not going to defend the statement that "the existence of legal rights has always been uncontroversial," but at this point I'm not going to touch it unless there is a consensus to do so.

It seems that much of your disagreement with other editors boils down to lack of mutual clarity regarding semantics.

Your statement about no government at the time recognizing the rights of the individual flies in the face of the well-known "rights of Englishmen" -- life, liberty, and property -- going back to Magna Carta. The eminent legal historian John Phillip Reid has a lot to say about the rights of Englishmen being legal rights and not natural rights. Of course his point of view is open to challenge, but that's not our role as wikipedia editors. Of course we can mention reliable sources who disagree with his view.--Other Choices (talk) 14:00, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand the premise of what others say about Paine carrying more weight than what he said himself. However, I agree we don't have to solve a dispute about competing views to acknowledge outright statements that something is uncontroversal is use weasel words to subtly advance a POV. Eodcarl (talk) 15:11, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Eodcarl, the premise is fundamental to wikipedia: No original research. If we put our own interpretation of Paine into the article, that is original research, which is not allowed. Instead, we must limit ourselves to what reliable sources say about a given subject, even when we have conclusive knowledge that the reliable sources are wrong! [I give a personal example of that on my user page.] When I was new around here, this seemed ridiculous, but as I began to understand how editors interact (both positive and negative), I realized the importance of this policy for keeping the wikipedia project moving forward.--Other Choices (talk) 01:34, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. However, there is a consensus that natural rights is a notable topic in its own right and should be spun out into a separate article once someone gets the time and inclination to do so. Jenks24 (talk) 10:06, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

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Natural and legal rights → Natural rights – This article is the result of a merger between once separate articles on "Natural rights" and "Legal rights". I can see no good reason for this merger and propose to revert it. They are both clearly distinctive encyclopedic topics. While it is likely that each article will refer to the other concept this is not the same as saying that they are the same topic, or that they can only be defined in opposition to each other.

As it stands the merged-in content from "Legal rights" has long be deleted from the merged Natural and legal rights article so it's not really a question of splitting the content, just moving one and restoring the other. Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 15:23, 4 July 2014 (UTC) Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 14:50, 10 June 2014 (UTC) — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 12:20, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Oppose rename (and comment on Third Opinion request removal): I'm a regular volunteer at 3O and saw this listing there in connection with this dispute, which I've removed due to this RM pending. 3O will not provide opinions when other DR or DR-like processes are pending in regard to the same dispute and this RM, which has its own resolution process, subsumes the dispute raised in that 3O request. Having said that, had I provided a 3O on that request (and I guess I'm kind of doing so here), I would have said that my opinion was that so long as both the Legal right and Natural rights articles were redirected to this article, I would have supported that redirection in the form in which the legal right article last existed. It was hardly more than a stub and wholly unreferenced and this portmanteau-like article is the better vehicle for the subjects at this time. If Blue-Haired Lawyer believes separate articles are more appropriate he may well have a point, but only if both those articles are well-developed. If that were the case, then this article could then be cut down somewhat and serve as a comparison of legal and natural rights and their interplay through history as its title suggests. But it should not serve as a single source for both concepts if both can be fleshed out independently (as Natural rights was in its last independent incarnation). I'd suggest that if BHL is sufficiently interested in that task that he draft a well-developed legal rights article in his personal userspace and then post it to mainspace and only then engage in this discussion. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 15:32, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Thus far my attempts to improve the legal rights have been frustrated by Pfhorrest who keeps reverting my edits. Writing an article in user space would be an option if notability was in issue which it clearly isn't. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 22:47, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

The point at issue is what belongs at an article about legal rights which isn't entirely redundant with either Rights, or Law, or this article (Natural and legal rights). An article about legal rights should be an article about rights inasmuch as they are of a legal nature, not just a rehash of what rights are, or what legal structures exist. "Rights inasmuch as they are of a legal nature" is part of the subject matter of this article, and is naturally treated alongside a discussion of what a right that is not of a legal nature would be, which is what natural rights are.

If there was enough to be said about each subject separately (i.e. that wasn't just repetition of what's also being said on the other article), then I'd agree, like TransporterMan above, that this article could be split into two complementary articles. To get to that point, material needs to be added to this article. Once there is enough being said about legal rights on this article that is not equally about natural rights -- nor just a rehash of something that Rights or Law would cover -- then a split would be warranted. If you have material like that to add, please add it here where appropriate, and in time there may come a point, if there's enough material to be added, that a split is warranted. But that time is not now. --Pfhorrest (talk) 00:21, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

• The main issue is the appropriate name for this article. WP:AND is illustrative of the problems with articles with 'and' in their titles. Natural rights and legal rights are not "closely related or complementary concepts". As it stands the article says that natural and legal are different kinds of rights even thought leading sources on the topic consider natural rights to be legal rights. The article name implies a false dichotomy in which right must be either one of the other.
• As far as redundancy is concerned. The [[Law] article barely mentions rights and the Rights article is more about the philosophy of rights rather than more black letter law issues which I would foresee the Legal rights article becoming. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 19:32, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

• The article as it stands is poorly-written, but that of itself isn't a good reason for a title change. In the English common-law tradition, natural law, as interpreted by leading jurists, was an explicitly recognized foundation of the common law. For centuries the standard English-language handbook for transforming natural-law principles into statute law and judicial decisions was Christopher St. Germain's "Doctor and Student," which was closely studied by Thomas Jefferson, who was, after all, an equity lawyer. The opposite view, divorcing legal rights from natural law, is represented by Nazi Germany, where the extermination of the Jews was done "legally," following laws enacted by the legislature. In my opinion, this dichotomy is well worth discussing in a wikipedia article, and there certainly are reliable sources that explore this. -- Other Choices
• Support: The concepts of "natural rights" and "legal rights" are certainly distinct. The first paragraph of the article makes this clear, defining the two terms sequentially in what comes across as a cringeworthy parody of an "X and Y" article. "X is this. Y is that." If the two concepts were uncontroversially connected, with each definable only with extensive reference to the other, then a case could be made for a joint article on both, but it is clear to me that those criteria are not satisfied here. Whether the article has well-written or well-developed content on both topics is entirely beside the point; an article entitled "Apples and oranges" should not exist regardless of how much of its content pertains to apples and how much to oranges. The existence of pages at apple and orange, even if those pages are stubby and shambolic, is a necessary prerequisite for well-written articles at apple and orange to be brought into existence. (Irony alert: I've just noticed that there is an article at Apples and oranges. However, the article is predominantly about the idiom to which I am alluding, so I will not consider it an exception to the principle that I am espousing.) -- Oliver P. (talk) 20:39, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I've still yet to see a proposal for how exactly an article about either topic would define its topic without reference to the other, any less so than all the comparable articles like negative and positive rights and liberty rights and claim rights. Apple and oranges are different kinds of fruit, but an apple is not just any non-orange fruit, nor an orange any non-apply fruit. A natural right, on the other hand, is one that is not merely legal, and a legal right is one which is man-made i.e. artificial i.e. not natural. --Pfhorrest (talk) 01:19, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

How about this? — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 11:32, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

The first and last sections of that article are all about comparing and contrasting legal rights with natural rights and so seem to me to suggest that a merged article like we already have is more appropriate. (And those sections could be a good source of inspiration for fleshing out this article further on more detailed minutia of the similarities and differences). The second section of that article is about analyzing rights in general into constituent concepts and is not specifically about rights inasmuch as they are a legal nature; discussion of whether and how rights break down into duties, permissions, etc, is not restricted to legal rights, and applies just as much to natural rights. (And we have similar discussion in the article Rights already). The third section there does seem to discuss rights inasmuch as they are of a legal nature themselves, without resorting either to comparison or contrast to natural rights, or to discussion of matters relating to rights in general, legal or otherwise; but it is a rather short section and I do not think that that outweighs the rest of it leaning in the other direction. --Pfhorrest (talk) 07:22, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

The article proves my point that legal rights can be discussed outside of the context of natural rights. It discusses the relationship between legal and moral rights not as opposable opposites but things which can some connection with each other. Moreover it discusses legal rights completely outside of the context of moral rights as a topic in its own right. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 21:10, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

This article is not only about them "as opposable opposites", but about all the relations (comparison and contrast both) between them. And my point at the end of the previous comment was that while that article does discuss a tiny bit on issues of legal rights which are not just issues about their relation to natural rights or about rights in general of any sort, it is a tiny bit, in the middle of an article which is overwhelmingly almost entirely on the same topic as either this article, or the article Rights simpliciter. --Pfhorrest (talk) 22:37, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

• Relisting comment. I know this RM has dragged on since May, but looking through the talk page history this issue has festered for years without a consensus one way or the other so I think a finding of no consensus would be a disservice to all involved. I will leave a note at each of the WikiProjects that are tagged at the top of this talk page in the hope bringing in some outside opinion. Jenks24 (talk) 15:23, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

• Support Natural rights. If there isn't enough content and specificity for there to be an article "legal rights" just don't recreate it. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 13:55, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Judging from your comment I think you mean this to be an "oppose" vote; supporting the requested move would support making this article only about natural rights, to make room for another article about legal rights, which it sounds like you don't want. --Pfhorrest (talk) 16:31, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: It seems to me that natural rights, legal rights and natural and legal rights are all good topics, and should all be at least good stubs for now and will all grow into good articles in time. The article at natural and legal rights should compare the two, as suggested by the sidebar which currently [4] lists it along with Claim rights and liberty rights, Individual and group rights, and Negative and positive rights, all under the heading of Theoretical distinctions. So agree that the merge was not a good idea, but I'm unconvinced that this proposed move will help. Why not just develop all three articles as they are, and avoid tangling the page histories any more than they already are? Andrewa (talk) 09:43, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

We don't have both positive rights, negative rights, and also positive and negative rights articles though, and it would seem extremely redundant to add the former two article in addition to the latter one that we already have. Same for any of those other distinctions, including this one. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:43, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose rename per Andrewa. There exists a basis for articles on legal rights, natural rights, and natural and legal rights, the last of these serving as a comparative or synthetic article. While mergers and crossediting may have confused the issue, this rename probably doesn't help things. Simply develop the three articles from their current states into the entities they should be. Xoloz (talk) 17:54, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose just for the record, my position is spelled out extensively above. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:43, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

I disagree with the closing comments that there is a "consensus" to develop natural rights into its own article separate from this one. Two in favor and one opposed does not a solid consensus make. --Pfhorrest (talk) 07:05, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Don't worry you can keep reverting any changes anyone makes to legal rights so it really doesn't make any difference anyway. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 21:51, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Refining what is a natural right

My theory pertains to Christ Himself. Indeed, John Locke and Robert Filmer were preaching the Gospel arguing the scripture concerning the proper flow of authority. That Christ is sovereign over all wasn't in dispute. It was the flow of authority directly beneath Him that became the issue. Sir Robert Filmer argued on the side of the divine right of kings this argument winning him a Knighthood. John Locke, writing under great threat to his person to the extent that he had to utilize an alias, argued on the side of our natural rights. Indeed, next in power are the people's natural rights! Again, from the point of view of the scripture, our natural rights originated from the *wretch's that Christ allowed within His ministry. To allow them to do so, Christ didn't have to interfere with the Jewish Old Testament law which, by and large, controlled the Jewish marketplace. Subtle point, Jesus intervened with the law within the disciples. This was the reason He had to kill a fig tree. He needed to put the fear of God in them. In other words, a job of the disciples was to serve as a buffer zone between Christ and the masses in order to keep Him from being touched inappropriately. In the gospel, when the disciples would confront a wretch approaching them inappropriately, Christ would have to intervene in order to allow a lowly woman to become part of his most Holy ministry. (In Jewish culture, women were deemed to be spiritually dead) The act of allowing these wretches to approach was when our natural rights were etched upon our souls (as we are offspring of these wretches today).

Indeed, as the soul cannot be destroyed (this by **Greek determination), so our natural rights cannot be repealed. There exists no such right as a legal one. Therefore, rights cannot be repealed by the law. That is nothing more than lawyers farting eloquently from their mouths.

• This explains why Judas had to betray Christ even though the Son of man had already clearly stated that the Son of Man would have to forgive him for such an offense. The law was never able to find Christ. After the very least wretch (the virgin mother Mary) had managed to hide the child Christ from a wayward king Herod, later on, as Christ once again fled from the law, it was only the very least among wretches that were able to seek Him out. The disciples themselves did not seek out Christ, but were enticed to follow after Him in search of riches. So, it was Christ Himself Who dispatched Judas to bring the law to Himself.

• • Oddly, it was the Greeks who did extensive development of the soul. That concept was then penciled in as a matter of hindsight within the Old Testament and later further developed within the New Testament.

75.255.152.94 (talk) 19:41, 26 September 2016 (UTC)Uncle Emanuel Watkins