Political Philosophy: Human Rights

 Rights are “advantages that may be legitimately claimed” (Mill). They can be considered under different headings.

 

 Human Rights; earlier known as "natural rights" were first postulated as “Life, liberty and the possession of property” (Locke) and “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” (Jefferson), and listed by the French Revolutionary leaders as “The imprescriptible rights of man”. They exist independently of positive law, and are common to all humanity: it is wrong for the state and any other power to deprive us of them without due process of law, and if they are infringed unjustly, we are, according to Locke and Jefferson, entitled to rebel. The concept is fundamental to liberal thought and the desire for a limited, non-interventionist state. 

    The concept of human rights was unknown to the ancient Greeks or the mediaeval writers. The idea of the “Rights of man” was denounced by the conservative thinker Edmund Burke, and dismissed by Bentham as “Nonsense on stilts”.

   A common argument is that even if “human rights” are an imaginary concept and cannot be proved to exist, most people think they ought to, and that the idea provides a good basis for moral conduct and a useful restraint on the power of the state, and that it is useful to treat them as if they had a real existence.

Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau agreed that under the Social Contract we rely on the power of the state to safeguard our rights. But what right do we have to oppose the state?   

Punishment, by definition, involves the removal of some natural rights. The question of how far the state is justified in infringing them (e.g. by conscription in wartime) has been endlessly debated!

 

Civil Rights are what we hold as citizens of a state, and are guaranteed (at least in theory!) by positive law. Examples would include the right to vote, to hold an official position, etc. Women did not hold such civil rights until they were given the vote. Children and lunatics do not have the same civil rights as sane adults, though their human rights may be the same. Criminals may forfeit civil rights. In some states (e.g. the USA) civil rights may be precisely stated in constitutional law. There is obviously an overlap between human and civil rights, but an example of the difference would be “the right to a fair trial” (which is surely a fundamental human right), and “the right to a jury trial” which is a civil right determined by law.

 Nowadays, “democratic rights” such as freedom of speech and writing, freedom to mount political campaigns and to criticise the government, are seen as essential aspects of a democratic society. Are these natural rights or civil rights?

 

All sorts of other rights have been postulated, which are more properly “Claims”; e.g. the right to education, a living wage, decent housing, medical care, etc. These are different from natural rights, in that they will probably involve intervention by the state to bring them about (unless the hope is that they can be provided by the workings of the free market), and therefore seem to be at odds with the old liberal ideal of a non-interventionist state. 

 

Some have argued for a “hierarchy of rights”, to establish that some are more important than others: for instance, if a starving man steals food to survive, how does his “right to life” weigh against someone else’s “right to property”? What about the competing rights (the right of the foetus to life as against the mother's right of control over her own body) in the debate over abortion? And what rights are there in suicide?

 

Recent discussion of rights has postulated a number of specific issues: gay rights, trans rights etc. What are these? What specifically might women’s rights be? (Animal rights are different again, and have been discussed in an earlier post)

 

The Marxists did not disagree with most of the above rights and claims, but argued that, as long as there were massive inequalities of property ownership, they were meaningless for the vast majority of the population. They also argued for giving priority to the fulfilment of the claims over absolute property rights, and also over the “democratic rights” claimed in the West.  

 

Privileges are benefits or advantages that may be claimed by particular individuals or groups, but are not available to everyone (e.g. British nobles having a seat in the House of Lords, or Privy Councillors having access to state secrets). They may be defined by law and be liable to be withdrawn. Should all legal rights perhaps be regarded as privileges?

 

Justice is often seen as being based on respect for the rights of others: unwarranted infringement of someone’s rights being by definition unjust.

Obligations would seem to result from rights: if I have a right to liberty, it would follow that other people (and the state) have an obligation to respect it.

When and how far, if at all, do we have any right to break the law of the state we live in? Thomas Aquinas makes it clear that we should not obey any human law that clearly goes against God's commands (e.g. to worship pagan idols), and Locke argues that we have the right to resist a law that threatens our natural rights. Hobbes strongly disagrees that we have any right to follow our consciences where they conflict with the state's laws, arguing that this effectively means that we can all disobey any law we choose. Of course, there is a major difference between a passive refusal to obey the law and open active revolt!