Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory. Rights are of essential importance in such disciplines as law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology.
Rights are often considered fundamental to civilization, being regarded as established pillars of society and culture, and the history of social conflicts can be found in the history of each right and its development. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "rights structure the form of governments, the content of laws, and the shape of morality as it is currently perceived." The connection between rights and struggle cannot be overstated — rights are not as much granted or endowed as they are fought for and claimed, and the essence of struggles past and ancient are encoded in the spirit of current concepts of rights and their modern formulations.
Read more about Rights: Definitional Issues, Rights and Politics, Etymology, History of Rights
Other articles related to "rights":
... See also History of human rights The specific enumeration of rights has differed greatly in different periods of history ... In many cases, the system of rights promulgated by one group has come into sharp and bitter conflict with that of other groups ... In the political sphere, a place in which rights have historically been an important issue, at present the question of who has what legal rights is sometimes addressed by the constitutions of the ...
... When he sold film rights to The Graduate, he surrendered the rights to any sequels ... School, Canal+, the French media company that owns the rights to The Graduate, would be able to adapt it for the screen without his permission ... for the full text, provided he could retrieve the film rights using French copyright law ...
... on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the Commission on Human Rights ...
... by Oswald Villard, and dedicated to campaigning for civil rights, equal voting rights, and equal educational opportunities ... was used to include "dark skinned people everywhere." Dozens of civil rights supporters, black and white, participated in the founding, but most executive officers were white ...
... respecting all religions and beliefs and recognizing their inviolable rights ... Eighth To completely uphold the principals of Basic Human Rights as laid down by religion the United Nations and International Institutions ... and commercial sectors while maintaining a balance between the rights of ownership and the free market and the rights of the people to social justice equal opportunity and basic amenities ...
Famous quotes containing the word rights:
“Unfortunately, I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle.”
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)
“Love your enemies. I saw this admonition now as simple, sensible advice. I knew I could face an angry, murderous mob without even the beginning of fear if I could love them. Like a flame, love consumes fear, and thus make true defeat impossible.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 2 (1962)
“Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: “I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.””
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)