Author: Haroon Khalil

Theory of legal rights presents a legalist or law-based position on origin, claim and nature of rights. It traces origin or source of rights in the form of enacted laws that have legal or positive authority behind them. Heywood defines legal rights as ‘rights which are enshrined in law and are therefore enforceable through the…

The theory of natural rights presents claims for rights based on the grounds, which are prior to recognition by the State or civil society. These rights are treated as eternal, permanent, inherent, inalienable, imprescriptible and immutable. However, it has been argued that the natural right to property has been historically unavailable and is relevant in…

Thomas Paine and T. H. Green have sought to justify claim of prior rights of the individual, i.e., rights independent of recognition of society and the state, based on teleological grounds. This means individuals have inherent moral rights based on dignity, need for self-development and self-realization as human beings. Paine wrote the celebrated book The Rights of Man (1791),…

Hobbes is the earliest advocate of natural rights on the contractual ground. Macpherson regards Hobbes a theorist of natural rights because he makes political obligations dependent on his postulates of individual natural rights. For Hobbes, the state of nature is one of natural rights without any control. By portraying a state of complete or licentious…

Natural rights are one of the earliest grounds for claim of individual rights. Natural rights are natural claims because they are gifts of nature, product of law of nature and do not depend upon any authority or sovereign power for recognition, prescription and enforcement. Two grounds, contractual and teleological, have been identified to support the theory of natural rights.…

The concept of rights is said to have originated in the medieval period and, as Isaiah Berlin has mentioned, the notion of individual rights was absent from the legal conception of Greeks and Romans.27 Andrew Vincent corroborates this position and says that the notion of rights is comparatively recent. The concept of jus as ‘right’ in Roman Law…

We have discussed the concepts of positive rights (legal rights), negative rights, residual rights and fundamental rights and also rights, which are available in terms of Bill of Rights or Fundamental Rights in the Constitution. There could be various other dimensions, such as civil, economic, human, legal, moral, natural, political, social and cultural, which require…

Rights as claims or entitlements imply legal relationship between the individuals or the groups and the State or amongst the individuals and groups themselves. Morality and immorality of a claim or entitlement may not have to do anything with legality or illegality of the same thing. For example, till the Child Labour (Eradication and Rehabilitation)…

The way rights of individuals and groups should be secured and guaranteed has been attempted differently. In some countries, rights are in the nature of Residual Rights as in England; in another, they are protected as Bill of Rights as in USA and yet another, as Fundamental Rights as in India. There have been different conventions of securing rights by either…

There could be certain rights in which the State is not authorized to interfere with individual. They consist of what remains after taking into account all the legal restraints that impinge upon an individual. Rights, which arise due to authorities not interfering, are negative rights. In other words, an individual has rights because public authorities…