Social Rights

Social rights are those rights arising from the social contract, in contrast to natural rights which arise from the natural law, but before the establishment of legal rights by positive law. For example, James Madison advocated that a right such as trial by jury arose neither from nature nor from a constitution of government, but from reified implications of the social contract.

Cecile Fabre argues that "it is legitimate to constrain democratic majorities, by way of the constitution, to respect and promote those fundamental rights of ours that protect the secure exercise of our autonomy and enable us to achieve well-being. Insofar as, by virtue of Ch. 1, social rights are such fundamental rights, it follows that they should be constitutionalized."

From a legal standpoint several approaches exercise and guarantee social rights; social rights under the constitution are rights of subjects or "subject rights". This assures that the public receives equal distribution of collective and private interests.

Famous quotes containing the words social and/or rights:

    Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony.
    Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

    The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.
    José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)