Chapter 10: Taking Rights Seriously

Chapter 10: Taking Rights Seriously

Amazon Reference:

Contemporary Moral Problems

Quote:

“The Government will not reestablish respect for law without giving the law some claim to respect.”

What I expect to learn:

I expect to learn about the justification of human rights from a political perspective and the underlying principles behind it.

Review:

Rights are a fundamental aspect of a democratic society. As many a lawyer or law professor would tell you, all of a person’s rights arise from the state, which is just a fancy way of saying that the state is the source of a person’s rights. Those are for legal rights, but what about rights that come naturally to us? Are there any such rights at all? With a little bit of reasoning, we can conclude that the state is the source of only a select group of rights. This question comes to mind: “Which comes first, a person’s dignity and liberty to do things or the state which serves to preserve this dignity and liberty?” Obviously, the former is fundamental to the latter’s existence. The opening statement, “rights are a fundamental aspect of a democratic society”, is true but only because rights are fundamental to any society. Human beings have inherent rights and the state only adds a few more that are rooted in the fundamental ones.

With that being said, we can conclude that human beings are by nature at liberty to do certain things. The only limitation to that liberty is that people cannot interfere with the liberties of other people. This, I believe, is the basis for the formation of laws and governments. There needs to be an agent to protect the rights of people from being violated by others. This is the government and the law is the basis for its power. Therefore the government has the right to stop a person from exercising certain rights but only because it is limiting another person from exercising his/her own. This is done so as to preserve the inherent human dignity of the members of the community as well as to have a just and equal society.

What I learned:

• The implications of everyone having rights in a society.
• The role of governments in policing the misuse of people’s rights.
• The underlying principles of human dignity and political equality as a basis for human rights.

Integrative Questions:

1. What are the sources of a person’s rights?
2. Why is it wrong to interfere with a person’s rights?
3. When is it okay to interfere with another person’s rights?
4. What are the underlying principles behind human rights?
5. What are the role/s of governments when it comes to dealing with human rights?