Inalienable rights: Encyclopedia - Inalienable rights

Inalienable rights

The term inalienable rights (or unalienable rights) refers to a set of human rights that are absolute, not awarded by human power, not transferable to another power, and incapable of repudiation. Several different sets of inalienable rights have been suggested by philosophers and politicians.

Inalienable rights - Origins

It has been argued that the idea of inalienable rights is derived from the freeborn rights claimed by the Englishman John Lilburne in his conflict with both the monarchy of King Charles I and the military dictatorship of the republic governed by Oliver Cromwell. Lilburne (known as Freeborn John) defined freeborn rights as being rights that every human being is born with, as opposed to rights bestowed by government or by human law.

The concept of inalienable rights is central to the ideology of liberalism. Inalienable rights played important roles in the justifications for both the French and American Revolutions. 17th-century philosopher John Locke discussed the idea of inalienable rights in his work, and identified them as being "life, liberty, and estate (or property)". The 1776 United States Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, famously asserts:

Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase wrote in the case of John Van Zandt, who had been charged with violating the Fugitive Slave Act, that:

Inalienable rights - Criticism

The concept of inalienable rights has often been criticized for being largely groundless, since no explanation is given as to where these rights come from. The Declaration of Independence claims that these rights are endowed by the "Creator". If they are indeed based on theological principles (as in "God-given rights"), one may ask which theological principles those are (since none of the major religions of the world confirm the existence of inalienable rights), or why those theological principles should be accepted by people who do not adhere to the religion from which they are derived.

If, on the other hand, inalienable rights are said to be based on Natural Law, then this argument can easily be criticized for being a non sequitur and an example of the naturalistic fallacy. The phrase "We hold these truths to be self-evident" has been accused of being simply a more elegant version of "Because we said so".

The existence of inalienable rights is unnecessary for the existence of a constitution or a set of laws and rights. The idea of a social contract – that rights and responsibilities are derived from a consensual contract between the government and the people – is the most widely recognized alternative.

Samuel P. Huntington, an American political scientist, wrote that the "inalienable rights" argument from the Declaration of Independence was necessary because "The British were white, English, and Protestant, just as we were. They had to have some other basis on which to justify independence".

See also

• Moral universalism
• Moral relativism
• Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People

Inalienable rights - Sources & further reading

• Locke, John. Two Treatises on Government. 1690 (primarily the second treatise)
• Lloyd Thomas, D.A. Locke on Government. 1995, Routledge. ISBN 0-415-09533-6
• Waldron, Jeremy [ed.] Theories of Rights 1984, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-875063-3

Categories: Cleanup from October 2005 | Law | Core issues in ethics | Politics

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