Talk:Natural and legal rights

natural law challenged the divine right of kings??

The lede cites the fringe economist Murray Rothbard for the ridiculous statement that natural law emerged as an alternative to the "divine right of kings" during the Enlightenment. Actually the reverse is true: During the 17th century, the "divine right of kings" emerged to challenge traditional natural-law limitations on royal power. King James I of England was sensible enough to limit himself to argumentation on the subject, whereas his son Charles I lost his head, so to speak.--Other Choices (talk) 01:48, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this is what Rothbard had in mind, but if you distinguish medieval natural law from modern natural rights, then natural rights theory emerged to combat the divine right of kings, which in term emerged as an attack on medieval natural law. Still, I don't know that you can build the article around the distinction between natural law and natural rights, since there isn't a scholarly consensus as to whether that distinction is or is not a real one. I don't know how to handle this. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 02:25, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Both the divine rights of kings and the scientific method of natural law were blessed by the pope. Our Founding Fathers utilized the latter process to divorce us out from a tyrant. In other words, by traditional legal precedence, one step our Founders could have taken was to grab the strongest, smartest American gentleman and then crowned him as a king. Then, also by tradition, a war would have been fought to determine history. But our Founders overturned that old world order of doing business by replacing it with a whole new world - establishing a new order with a scientific conclusion called a natural law.

According to my professor which is written in my notes, a natural right literally reduced on the physical level to the extent of the soul. There existed no solid foundation for the cognitive sciences during the time of the American Enlightenment, but mostly the physical sciences. Immanuel Kant, the father of epistemology was a peer figure of the French Revolution while living at the same time as our Founders.

Through John Locke's two treatises, our natural rights rose to challenge a king who was proclaiming to possess absolute power.

A proclamation is different from a declaration. Example: Proclamation of 1763 versus Declaration of 1776. A proclamation is made by someone who possesses God's authority; meanwhile, our founders declared a new order of a Natural Law while submissive to the authority of God.

So that is the significance of an unalienable natural right. Such a right supersedes even a king proclaming himself to possess absolute power. This trick by the king to gain greater power for himself is all based on Roman's chapter 8. Sort of like wishing for three more wishes every third wish. Unfortunately, this act by the kind of proclaiming himself to possess absolute power looked very similar to when the Roman Emperors were proclaiming themselves to be living gods.

Our Bill of Rights should be considered our Proclaimed Rights and a whole separate document from the rest of the outlining laws instituting the new government within the U.S. Constitution, the latter dealing more specifically with a necessary tyranny or, as it was best put romantically, a "more perfect Union."Uncle Emanuel Watkins (talk) 17:45, 7 July 2014 (UTC)Uncle Emanuel Watkins

All I can say is that your professor's view is not accepted enough by other scholars to satisfy Wikipedia's neutrality guideline. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 11:55, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree. This is why today's modern school system needs scrapping. Our best schools today are Old World as they existed prior to the creation of a new nation. In other words, our Founders didn't take the strongest and smartest among them to crown his head in order to benefit themselves. That was the prior way of ordaining a new nation. Instead, they stepped down from that high podium to sit of, by, and for the people. Right? Rights have no power pertaining to rights in and of themselves. Rights are not the glorious end, but a means created in questioning the proper flow of authority. The ultimate power went to Christ primarily and this was never in dispute. Beneath Him, power either went through Sir Robert Filmer's divine right of kings or through John Locke's natural rights of the people.

75.255.97.72 (talk) 20:17, 26 September 2016 (UTC)Uncle Emanuel Watkins

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. However, there is a consensus that natural rights is a notable topic in its own right and should be spun out into a separate article once someone gets the time and inclination to do so. Jenks24 (talk) 10:06, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

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Natural and legal rights → Natural rights – This article is the result of a merger between once separate articles on "Natural rights" and "Legal rights". I can see no good reason for this merger and propose to revert it. They are both clearly distinctive encyclopedic topics. While it is likely that each article will refer to the other concept this is not the same as saying that they are the same topic, or that they can only be defined in opposition to each other.

As it stands the merged-in content from "Legal rights" has long be deleted from the merged Natural and legal rights article so it's not really a question of splitting the content, just moving one and restoring the other. Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 15:23, 4 July 2014 (UTC) Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 14:50, 10 June 2014 (UTC) — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 12:20, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Oppose rename (and comment on Third Opinion request removal): I'm a regular volunteer at 3O and saw this listing there in connection with this dispute, which I've removed due to this RM pending. 3O will not provide opinions when other DR or DR-like processes are pending in regard to the same dispute and this RM, which has its own resolution process, subsumes the dispute raised in that 3O request. Having said that, had I provided a 3O on that request (and I guess I'm kind of doing so here), I would have said that my opinion was that so long as both the Legal right and Natural rights articles were redirected to this article, I would have supported that redirection in the form in which the legal right article last existed. It was hardly more than a stub and wholly unreferenced and this portmanteau-like article is the better vehicle for the subjects at this time. If Blue-Haired Lawyer believes separate articles are more appropriate he may well have a point, but only if both those articles are well-developed. If that were the case, then this article could then be cut down somewhat and serve as a comparison of legal and natural rights and their interplay through history as its title suggests. But it should not serve as a single source for both concepts if both can be fleshed out independently (as Natural rights was in its last independent incarnation). I'd suggest that if BHL is sufficiently interested in that task that he draft a well-developed legal rights article in his personal userspace and then post it to mainspace and only then engage in this discussion. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 15:32, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Thus far my attempts to improve the legal rights have been frustrated by Pfhorrest who keeps reverting my edits. Writing an article in user space would be an option if notability was in issue which it clearly isn't. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 22:47, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

The point at issue is what belongs at an article about legal rights which isn't entirely redundant with either Rights, or Law, or this article (Natural and legal rights). An article about legal rights should be an article about rights inasmuch as they are of a legal nature, not just a rehash of what rights are, or what legal structures exist. "Rights inasmuch as they are of a legal nature" is part of the subject matter of this article, and is naturally treated alongside a discussion of what a right that is not of a legal nature would be, which is what natural rights are.

If there was enough to be said about each subject separately (i.e. that wasn't just repetition of what's also being said on the other article), then I'd agree, like TransporterMan above, that this article could be split into two complementary articles. To get to that point, material needs to be added to this article. Once there is enough being said about legal rights on this article that is not equally about natural rights -- nor just a rehash of something that Rights or Law would cover -- then a split would be warranted. If you have material like that to add, please add it here where appropriate, and in time there may come a point, if there's enough material to be added, that a split is warranted. But that time is not now. --Pfhorrest (talk) 00:21, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

• The main issue is the appropriate name for this article. WP:AND is illustrative of the problems with articles with 'and' in their titles. Natural rights and legal rights are not "closely related or complementary concepts". As it stands the article says that natural and legal are different kinds of rights even thought leading sources on the topic consider natural rights to be legal rights. The article name implies a false dichotomy in which right must be either one of the other.
• As far as redundancy is concerned. The [[Law] article barely mentions rights and the Rights article is more about the philosophy of rights rather than more black letter law issues which I would foresee the Legal rights article becoming. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 19:32, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

• The article as it stands is poorly-written, but that of itself isn't a good reason for a title change. In the English common-law tradition, natural law, as interpreted by leading jurists, was an explicitly recognized foundation of the common law. For centuries the standard English-language handbook for transforming natural-law principles into statute law and judicial decisions was Christopher St. Germain's "Doctor and Student," which was closely studied by Thomas Jefferson, who was, after all, an equity lawyer. The opposite view, divorcing legal rights from natural law, is represented by Nazi Germany, where the extermination of the Jews was done "legally," following laws enacted by the legislature. In my opinion, this dichotomy is well worth discussing in a wikipedia article, and there certainly are reliable sources that explore this. -- Other Choices
• Support: The concepts of "natural rights" and "legal rights" are certainly distinct. The first paragraph of the article makes this clear, defining the two terms sequentially in what comes across as a cringeworthy parody of an "X and Y" article. "X is this. Y is that." If the two concepts were uncontroversially connected, with each definable only with extensive reference to the other, then a case could be made for a joint article on both, but it is clear to me that those criteria are not satisfied here. Whether the article has well-written or well-developed content on both topics is entirely beside the point; an article entitled "Apples and oranges" should not exist regardless of how much of its content pertains to apples and how much to oranges. The existence of pages at apple and orange, even if those pages are stubby and shambolic, is a necessary prerequisite for well-written articles at apple and orange to be brought into existence. (Irony alert: I've just noticed that there is an article at Apples and oranges. However, the article is predominantly about the idiom to which I am alluding, so I will not consider it an exception to the principle that I am espousing.) -- Oliver P. (talk) 20:39, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I've still yet to see a proposal for how exactly an article about either topic would define its topic without reference to the other, any less so than all the comparable articles like negative and positive rights and liberty rights and claim rights. Apple and oranges are different kinds of fruit, but an apple is not just any non-orange fruit, nor an orange any non-apply fruit. A natural right, on the other hand, is one that is not merely legal, and a legal right is one which is man-made i.e. artificial i.e. not natural. --Pfhorrest (talk) 01:19, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

How about this? — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 11:32, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

The first and last sections of that article are all about comparing and contrasting legal rights with natural rights and so seem to me to suggest that a merged article like we already have is more appropriate. (And those sections could be a good source of inspiration for fleshing out this article further on more detailed minutia of the similarities and differences). The second section of that article is about analyzing rights in general into constituent concepts and is not specifically about rights inasmuch as they are a legal nature; discussion of whether and how rights break down into duties, permissions, etc, is not restricted to legal rights, and applies just as much to natural rights. (And we have similar discussion in the article Rights already). The third section there does seem to discuss rights inasmuch as they are of a legal nature themselves, without resorting either to comparison or contrast to natural rights, or to discussion of matters relating to rights in general, legal or otherwise; but it is a rather short section and I do not think that that outweighs the rest of it leaning in the other direction. --Pfhorrest (talk) 07:22, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

The article proves my point that legal rights can be discussed outside of the context of natural rights. It discusses the relationship between legal and moral rights not as opposable opposites but things which can some connection with each other. Moreover it discusses legal rights completely outside of the context of moral rights as a topic in its own right. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 21:10, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

This article is not only about them "as opposable opposites", but about all the relations (comparison and contrast both) between them. And my point at the end of the previous comment was that while that article does discuss a tiny bit on issues of legal rights which are not just issues about their relation to natural rights or about rights in general of any sort, it is a tiny bit, in the middle of an article which is overwhelmingly almost entirely on the same topic as either this article, or the article Rights simpliciter. --Pfhorrest (talk) 22:37, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

• Relisting comment. I know this RM has dragged on since May, but looking through the talk page history this issue has festered for years without a consensus one way or the other so I think a finding of no consensus would be a disservice to all involved. I will leave a note at each of the WikiProjects that are tagged at the top of this talk page in the hope bringing in some outside opinion. Jenks24 (talk) 15:23, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

• Support Natural rights. If there isn't enough content and specificity for there to be an article "legal rights" just don't recreate it. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 13:55, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Judging from your comment I think you mean this to be an "oppose" vote; supporting the requested move would support making this article only about natural rights, to make room for another article about legal rights, which it sounds like you don't want. --Pfhorrest (talk) 16:31, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: It seems to me that natural rights, legal rights and natural and legal rights are all good topics, and should all be at least good stubs for now and will all grow into good articles in time. The article at natural and legal rights should compare the two, as suggested by the sidebar which currently [1] lists it along with Claim rights and liberty rights, Individual and group rights, and Negative and positive rights, all under the heading of Theoretical distinctions. So agree that the merge was not a good idea, but I'm unconvinced that this proposed move will help. Why not just develop all three articles as they are, and avoid tangling the page histories any more than they already are? Andrewa (talk) 09:43, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

We don't have both positive rights, negative rights, and also positive and negative rights articles though, and it would seem extremely redundant to add the former two article in addition to the latter one that we already have. Same for any of those other distinctions, including this one. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:43, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose rename per Andrewa. There exists a basis for articles on legal rights, natural rights, and natural and legal rights, the last of these serving as a comparative or synthetic article. While mergers and crossediting may have confused the issue, this rename probably doesn't help things. Simply develop the three articles from their current states into the entities they should be. Xoloz (talk) 17:54, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose just for the record, my position is spelled out extensively above. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:43, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

I disagree with the closing comments that there is a "consensus" to develop natural rights into its own article separate from this one. Two in favor and one opposed does not a solid consensus make. --Pfhorrest (talk) 07:05, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Don't worry you can keep reverting any changes anyone makes to legal rights so it really doesn't make any difference anyway. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 21:51, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

A question, thanks

If someone could assist with this, thank you. On the Samuel Adams article it says Adams, through his writings, was among the first to claim that citizens had 'natural rights'. Yet no mention of Adams exists, at least on a quick read-through, in this article. Does someone have a good reference on Adams' involvement in the evolution of the term and concept 'natural rights'? Thanks. Randy Kryn 22:27 23 January, 2015 (UTC)

Just because Samuel Adams said that citizens have natural rights doesn't mean that he understood what a natural right is. There exists no such 'right' as a legal one. Indeed, as we can see by how our own government works today, there isn't a more perfect lie than the law. The *two party system divides itself against the people. A two party Congress then legislates this lie. Next, the new law can then be administered by the president in a total opposite direction it was intended, and / or the lie can be further adjudicated by the supreme court in judgement in the total opposite direction it was intended. In the end, there is nothing any more deceitful than the law.

A natural right was provided to us by the wretches which Christ allowed into his ministry. In order to all them to become part of it, Christ had to intervene with the law in the disciples.

• Jesus did not flee from what people said, but from people who would divide themselves against Him.

75.255.97.72 (talk) 20:06, 26 September 2016 (UTC)Uncle Emanuel Watkins

Refining what is a natural right

My theory pertains to Christ Himself. Indeed, John Locke and Robert Filmer were preaching the Gospel arguing the scripture concerning the proper flow of authority. That Christ is sovereign over all wasn't in dispute. It was the flow of authority directly beneath Him that became the issue. Sir Robert Filmer argued on the side of the divine right of kings this argument winning him a Knighthood. John Locke, writing under great threat to his person to the extent that he had to utilize an alias, argued on the side of our natural rights. Indeed, next in power are the people's natural rights! Again, from the point of view of the scripture, our natural rights originated from the *wretch's that Christ allowed within His ministry. To allow them to do so, Christ didn't have to interfere with the Jewish Old Testament law which, by and large, controlled the Jewish marketplace. Subtle point, Jesus intervened with the law within the disciples. This was the reason He had to kill a fig tree. He needed to put the fear of God in them. In other words, a job of the disciples was to serve as a buffer zone between Christ and the masses in order to keep Him from being touched inappropriately. In the gospel, when the disciples would confront a wretch approaching them inappropriately, Christ would have to intervene in order to allow a lowly woman to become part of his most Holy ministry. (In Jewish culture, women were deemed to be spiritually dead) The act of allowing these wretches to approach was when our natural rights were etched upon our souls (as we are offspring of these wretches today).

Indeed, as the soul cannot be destroyed (this by **Greek determination), so our natural rights cannot be repealed. There exists no such right as a legal one. Therefore, rights cannot be repealed by the law. That is nothing more than lawyers farting eloquently from their mouths.

• This explains why Judas had to betray Christ even though the Son of man had already clearly stated that the Son of Man would have to forgive him for such an offense. The law was never able to find Christ. After the very least wretch (the virgin mother Mary) had managed to hide the child Christ from a wayward king Herod, later on, as Christ once again fled from the law, it was only the very least among wretches that were able to seek Him out. The disciples themselves did not seek out Christ, but were enticed to follow after Him in search of riches. So, it was Christ Himself Who dispatched Judas to bring the law to Himself.

• • Oddly, it was the Greeks who did extensive development of the soul. That concept was then penciled in as a matter of hindsight within the Old Testament and later further developed within the New Testament.

75.255.152.94 (talk) 19:41, 26 September 2016 (UTC)Uncle Emanuel Watkins

Untitled

I don't understand how people try to change the meaning of a word because they disport who they are and feel superior than someone whom is modest and keep their credentials from the public. I am also a graduate with honors as well, but I am not plastering it all over the internet due to a lack of an alter ego that some individuals portrait therefore, people should come to their senses refrain from displaying their alter ego and stop rewriting the meaning of a word to fit a specific agenda or selfish reasons. Remember alter ego and pride will not get anyone anywhere.

I reverted the last edit and I cited the source for everyone to see, but some individuals have blinders on and cannot see. I am not trying to insult anyone I just say it how I see it. I don't believe in sugar coating, beating around the bushes, or being political correct.

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AttentiontoDetails (talk • contribs) 13:51, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't know what you're on about with regard to ego and credentials above as nobody's said anything about that here, but as regards your recent edits: I reverted them primarily because they were made clearly lacking attention to detail (pun intended), as you chopped off most of a sentence and then inserted a different stand-alone sentence after the stump of a beginning of the old one. On top of that, which you've now fixed in your newer version of that edit, it's not at all clear what you're trying to say or what your objection to the old wording is, and why your new wording is supposed to be better. It sounds like your main thrust is maybe to mention that there are different bases for natural law; if that's so, then that belongs on the natural law article, not here. Some modified version of that note could maybe belong here somewhere in a place that mentions the relationships between natural rights and natural law, but not in the lede, where we say what the topic of natural rights is even about. (It would also be inappropriate for the lede in the article on natural law, because what you wrote is not a definition of the topic of natural law, just an incidental fact about that topic). Furthermore, in your latest edit as it stood before I just reverted it, you say that natural rights are natural law, which is blatantly false. Natural rights might be grounded in natural law (which in turn might be grounded in one of those three ways your edits mention), but natural rights are not defined as those three bases for natural law, and even trying to say that is simply incoherent; it's like saying "French fries are Russet, Idaho, or red"; yeah, french fries are made from potatoes, and those are three kinds of potatoes, but french fries are not identical to those three varieties of potato, and the sentence trying to declare them such barely even makes sense to read. --Pfhorrest (talk) 17:38, 30 September 2016 (UTC)