Within the philosophy of human rights, some philosophers and political scientists make a distinction between negative and positive rights. According to this view, a positive right imposes a moral obligation on a person to do something for someone, while a negative right merely obliges others to refrain from interfering with someone's attempt to do something. In jurisprudence and law, a right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in civil society. ... For the album by Moby, see Animal Rights (album). ... Manifestations Slavery · Racial profiling · Lynching Hate speech · Hate crime · Hate groups Genocide · Holocaust · Pogrom Ethnocide · Ethnic cleansing · Race war Religious persecution · Gay bashing Movements Discriminatory Aryanism · Neo-Nazism · Supremacism Fundamentalism · Kahanism Anti-discriminatory Abolitionism · Civil rights · Gay rights Womens/Universal suffrage · Mens rights Childrens rights · Youth rights... Civil rights or positive rights are those legal rights retained by citizens and protected by the government. ... The term collective rights refers to rights which are held and exercised by all the people collectively, or by specific subsets of the people. ... The Fathers rights movement is a loose network of interest groups, primarily in western countries, established to campaign for equal treatment by the courts in family law issues such as child custody after divorce, child support, and paternity determinations. ... The gay rights movement is a collection of loosely aligned civil rights groups, human rights groups, support groups and political activists seeking acceptance, tolerance and equality for non-heterosexual, (homosexual, bisexual), and transgender people - despite the fact that it is typically referred to as the gay rights movement, members also... Group rights are rights that all members of a group have by virtue of being in that group. ... Human rights are rights which some hold to be inalienable and belonging to all humans. ... The term inalienable rights (or unalienable rights) refers to a set of human rights that are in some sense fundamental, are not awarded by human power, and cannot be surrendered. ... Individual rights represent the moral rights of individuals in society prior to government. ... In modern English and European systems of jurisprudence and law, a right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in civil society. ... Mens Rights involves the promotion of male equality, rights, and freedoms in society. ... For other uses, see Universalism (disambiguation). ... Social rights refer to what are usually positive rights, which ensure to all people a fair standard of treatment. ... The division of human rights into three generations was initially proposed in 1979 by the Czech jurist Karel Vasak at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg. ... The term women’s rights typically refers to freedoms inherently possessed by women and girls of all ages, which may be institutionalized or ignored and/or illegitimately suppressed by law or custom in a particular society. ... Labor rights or workers rights are a group of legal rights and claimed human rights having to do with labor relations between workers and their employers, usually obtained under labor and employment law. ... Manifestations Slavery · Racial profiling · Lynching Hate speech · Hate crime · Hate groups Genocide · Holocaust · Pogrom Ethnocide · Ethnic cleansing · Race war Religious persecution · Gay bashing Pedophobia · Ephebiphobia Movements Discriminatory Aryanism · Neo-Nazism · Supremacism Kahanism Anti-discriminatory Abolitionism · Civil rights · Gay rights Womens/Universal suffrage · Mens rights Childrens rights · Youth... Human rights are rights which some hold to be inalienable and belonging to all humans. ...

To state the difference more formally, if 'A' has a negative right against 'B' then 'B' must refrain from acting in a way that would prevent 'A' from doing 'x'. If 'A' has a positive right against 'B', then 'B' must assist 'A' to do 'x' if 'A' is not able to do 'x' without that assistance. For example, a negative right to life would require others to refrain from killing a person. A positive right to life would require others act to save the life of someone who would otherwise die.

Negative rights may be used to justify political rights such as freedom of speech, property, habeas corpus, freedom from violent crime, freedom of worship, a fair trial, freedom from slavery and the right to bear arms. Positive rights may be used to justify public education, health care, social security or a minimum standard of living. This article is about the general concept. ... // Use of the term The concept of property or ownership has no single or universally accepted definition. ... In common law countries, habeas corpus () (Latin: [We command that] you have the body) is the name of a legal action, or writ, through which a person can seek relief from unlawful detention of themselves or another person. ... A violent crime or crime of violence is a crime in which the offender uses or threatens violent force upon the victim. ... Freedom of worship and freedom of religion have two totally different meanings. ... The Right to a fair trial is an essential right in all countries respecting the rule of law. ... Slave redirects here. ... The right to bear arms refers to the right that individuals have to weapons. ... A physician visiting the sick in a hospital. ... Social security primarily refers to social welfare service concerned with social protection, or protection against socially recognized conditions, including poverty, old age, disability, unemployment and others. ... The standard of living refers to the quality and quantity of goods and services available to people and the way these services and goods are distributed within a population. ...

In the 'three generations' account of human rights, negative rights are often associated with 'first-generation rights', while positive rights are associated with 'second-generation rights'. The division of human rights into three generations was initially proposed in 1979 by the Czech jurist Karel Vasak at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg. ...

Overview

Under the theory of positive and negative rights, a negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another human being, or group of people, such as a state, usually in the form of abuse or coercion. A positive right is a right to be provided with something through the action of another person or the state. In theory a negative right proscribes or forbids certain actions, while a positive right prescribes or requires certain actions. In the framework of the Kantian categorical imperative, negative rights can be associated with perfect duties while positive rights can be connected to imperfect duties Coercion is the practice of compelling a person to involuntarily behave in a certain way (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats, intimidation or some other form of pressure or force. ... “Kant” redirects here. ... The categorical imperative is the central philosophical concept of the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and of modern deontological ethics. ... The categorical imperative is the central philosophical concept of the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and of modern deontological ethics. ... The categorical imperative is the central philosophical concept of the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and of modern deontological ethics. ...

A right to an education is considered a positive right because education must be provided by a series of 'positive' actions by others. School buildings, teachers and materials must be actively provided in order for such a right to be fulfilled. The right to be secure in one's home, on the other hand, is considered a negative right, on the grounds that in order for it to be fulfilled, others need take no particular action but merely refrain from certain actions, specifically trespassing or breaking into one's home. In law, trespass can be: the criminal act of going into somebody else’s land or property without permission; it is also a civil law tort that may be a valid cause of action to seek judicial relief and possibly damages through a lawsuit. ...

Belief in a distinction between positive and negative rights is usually maintained, or emphasised, by classical liberals and libertarians who believe that positive rights lack existence until they are created by contract. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights lists both positive and negative rights (but does not identify them as such). The constitutions of most liberal democracies guarantee negative rights, but not all include positive rights. Nevertheless, positive rights are often guaranteed by other laws, and the majority of liberal democracies provide their citizens with publicly funded education, health care, social security and unemployment benefits. Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism[1] and laissez-faire liberalism[2]) is a doctrine stressing the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, constitutional limitations of government, free markets, and individual freedom from restraint as exemplified in the writings of Adam... This article does not adequately cite its references. ... The foundation of the U.N. The United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate co-operation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress and human rights issues. ... Eleanor Roosevelt with the Spanish version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ... Liberal democracy is a form of government. ... Unemployment benefits are payments made by governments to unemployed people. ...

Criticism and response

Critics argue that the distinction between negative and positive rights is a false dichotomy. Some draw attention to the question of enforcement to argue that it is illogical for certain rights traditionally characterised as negative, such as the right to property or freedom from violence, to be so categorised. While rights to property and freedom from violence require that individuals refrain from fraud and theft, they can only be upheld by 'positive' actions by individuals or the state. Individuals can only defend the right to property by repelling attempted theft, while the state must make provision for a police force, or even army, which in turn must be funded through taxation. It is therefore argued that these rights, although generally considered negative by libertarians and classical liberals, are in fact just as 'positive' or 'economic' in nature as 'positive' rights such as the right to an education.^[1]

According to Jan Narveson, the view of some that there is no distinction between negative and positive rights on the ground that negative rights require police and courts for their enforcement is "mistaken." He says that the question between what one has a right to do and who if anybody will enforce it are separate issues. If rights are only negative then it simply means no one has a duty to enforce them, although individuals have a right to use any non-forcible means to gain the cooperation of others in protecting those rights. Therefore, he says "the distinction between negative and positive is quite robust." [2] However, this response could also be used by advocates of positive rights, since one could equally well say that people have a right to food and shelter, for example, but that no-one has a duty to enforce this right. Libertarians hold that positive rights, which would include a right to be protected, do not exist until they are created by contract. However, those who hold this view do not mean that police, for example, are not obligated to protect the rights of citizens. Since they contract with their employers to defend citizens from violence, then they have created that obligation to their employer. A negative right to life allows an individual to defend his life from others trying to kill him or to obtain voluntary assistance from others in order to defend his life, but he may not force others to defend him because he has no natural right to be provided with defense. To force a person to defend one's own negative rights, or the negative rights of a third party, would be to violate that person's negative rights. By this reasoning, slavery, is a violation of individual rights. Jan Narveson (born 1936) is a professor of philosophy at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. ...

Other advocates of the view that there is a distinction between negative and positive rights argue that the presence of a police force or army is not due to any positive right to these services that citizens claim, but rather because they are natural monopolies or public goods -- features of any human society that will arise naturally, even while adhering to the concept of negative rights only. Robert Nozick discusses this idea at length in his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. ^[3] In economics, a natural monopoly is a persistent situation where a single company is the only supplier of a particular kind of product or service due to the fundamental cost structure of the industry. ... In economics, a public good is one that cannot or will not be produced for individual profit, since it is difficult to get people to pay for its large beneficial externalities. ... Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a work of political philosophy written by Robert Nozick in 1974. ...

Some critics go further to hold that any right can be made to appear either positive or negative depending on the language used to define it. For instance, the right to be free from starvation is considered 'positive' on the grounds that it implies a starving person must be provided with food through the positive action of others, but on the other hand, as James P. Sterba argues, it might just as easily be characterised as the right of the starving person not to be interfered with in taking the surplus food of others. He writes: This article is about extreme malnutrition. ...

What is at stake is the liberty of the poor not to be interfered with in taking from the surplus possessions of the rich what is necessary to satisfy their basic needs. Needless to say, libertarians would want to deny that the poor have this liberty. But how could they justify such a denial? As this liberty of the poor has been specified, it is not a positive right to receive something, but a negative right of non-interference.^[4]

The discussion often centers on the nature of rights themselves; some philosophers argue that rights are purely moral principles rather than legal rules that should be enforced by governments. Thus, in this view, one person's negative right does not impose a moral obligation on anybody else (including the government) to affirmatively protect that right against aggressors; the obligation is only to refrain from violating it themselves - a negative obligation. This view is put forward by Tibor R. Machan: Tibor R. Machan, Ph. ...

In some rare cases, an innocent person might indeed be totally helpless and have no choice but to obtain resources by stealing them. Perhaps only filching that piece of fruit will stave off immediate starvation. But extraordinary circumstances cannot generate laws granting a permanent right to steal, not when stealing itself means taking by force what by right belongs to others. .... As for those who believe that protection of negative rights requires positive rights, they fail to show that any such right to protection can exist unless there already exist the more fundamental—and “negative”—right to liberty.^[5]

Some theorists discredit the division between positive and negative rights by claiming that rights are interconnected. ^[6]

Notes

1. ^  Publishers Weekly review of Stephen Holmes and Cass R. Sunnstein, The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes, ISBN 0393320332.
2. http://www.againstpolitics.com/libertarianism/index.html
3. ^  Nozick, Robert (1975). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Oxford : Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-15680-1
4. ^  Sterba, J.P., "From Liberty to Welfare" in Ethics: The Big Questions. Malden, MA : Blackwell, 1998. (page 238)
5. ^  Hodgson, D. (1998). The Human Right to Education. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing
6. ^  Machan, Tibor R., "The Perils of Positive Rights" in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, April 2001 Vol. 51 No. 4

Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a work of political philosophy written by Robert Nozick in 1974. ...

See also

• Two Concepts of Liberty: a lecture by Isaiah Berlin which distinguished between positive and negative liberty.
• Natural rights

Two Concepts of Liberty was the inaugural lecture delivered by Isaiah Berlin before the University of Oxford on October 31, 1958. ... Sir Isaiah Berlin, OM (June 6, 1909 – November 5, 1997), was a political philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the leading liberal thinkers of the 20th century. ... Positive liberty is an idea that was first expressed and analyzed as a separate conception of liberty by John Stuart Mill but most notably described by Isaiah Berlin. ... The philosophical concept of negative liberty refers to an individuals liberty from being subjected to the authority of others. ... For other uses, see Universalism (disambiguation). ...

External Links

• Walter Williams, "Rights vs. Wishes", Capitalism Magazine, October 27 2002, arguing against the validity of positive rights