Positive+and+Negative+Rights

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Positive Rights v Negative Rights Philosophers and political scientists make a distinction between negative and positive rights. According to this view, positive rights permit or oblige action, whereas negative rights permit or oblige inaction. These permissions or obligations may be of either a legal or moral character. Likewise, the notion of positive and negative rights may be applied to either liberty rights or claim rights, either permitting one to act or refrain from acting, or obliging others to act or refrain from acting.

Rights considered negative rights may include civil and political rights such as freedom of speech, private property, freedom from violent crime, freedom of worship, habeas corpus, a [|fair trial], freedom from slavery. e.g. The Bill of Rights limits government action on the individual.

Rights considered positive rights may include other civil and political rights such as [|police] protection of person and property and the right to counsel, as well as economic, social and cultural rights such as public education, national security, military, health care, social security, and a minimum standard of living. e.g. These rights are often called entitlements, meaning the government owes the citizen certain services.

Rights are often spoken of as inalienable and sometimes even absolute. However, in practice this is often taken as graded absolutism; rights are ranked by degree of importance, and violations of lesser ones are accepted in the course of preventing violations of greater ones. Thus, even if the right not to be killed is inalienable, the corresponding obligation on others to refrain from killing is generally understood to have at least one exception: self-defense.