Natural rights

Natural rights are rights said to belong to every person by nature, not by grant of a king or legislature. Common examples in the tradition include life, liberty and property. Because they come before government, they are described as unalienable: they cannot be given up or taken away legitimately.

The idea was developed by thinkers such as John Locke, who argued that government exists to protect rights people already have. The Declaration of Independence draws on it in stating that people are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It underlies the social contract tradition and much of classical liberalism.

Natural rights are central to conservative and libertarian argument about the limits of government and to the debate over unenumerated constitutional rights under the Ninth Amendment. Critics from several directions, such as the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who called them "nonsense upon stilts," and later positivists, argue that rights are created by law and society, not nature. Others dispute their religious or metaphysical foundations. Related ideas include natural law, from which many versions of the theory derive.