Rights and the Law Classification, Historical

Rights and the Law Classification, Historical

The word, rights, as used in municipal law and in the classification of law given (in Law Classification, Historical ), denotes two groups of attributes attached to persons. I. It usually means a power in one person, called the right-holder, to force another, called the duty-bearer, by aid of the courts of justice to do or to forbear to do some act. For example, A has a legal right against B to enforce through the courts payment of B’s promissory note which A holds.

Such a right may be called a protected right. The class includes a right protected in-directly by the courts, although directly by self-redress. 2. When the word, right, is applied to the rightholder’s own acts, it means absence of legal prohibition. For example, a man has a right to practice such forms of religious worship as he chooses, not injurious to the State; he has a right to express his opinions about public affairs and about men in public office. Such a right may be called a permissive right. If the State goes further than abstaining from prohibiting the man’s act, and protects him in doing it, against interference by other men, he has a right under the first definition of the term as well as under the second.

The word, right, is not here used, as it often is in common speech, as synonymous with justice. Rights are primary, that is, given for their own sake irrespective of any prior breach of law, or secondary, given in substitution for a violated primary right, or to enforce a primary right or another secondary right. Thus, B’s right as a citizen of a State to vote at elections, under such limitations as the law of the State may prescribe, his right of personal security, that is, his right against persons generally not to have his person touched or interfered with, his right of dominion over the house he owns and occupies, and his right to have C perform his contract to pay a sum of money, are all primary rights. B’s rights to remedies for the violation of these primary rights are secondary rights.
As a duty never exists without a rightholder to assert it, who is either a private person or the State, it is generally unnecessary to consider duties apart from rights. In the classification, in the absence of special facts, calling for a departure from the general rule duties are placed under their corresponding rights.

See Also

Conclusion

Notes

References and Further Reading

About the Author/s and Reviewer/s

Author: international

Mentioned in these Entries

Abandon, Historical 2, About Authority and Saction of International Law, Historical 2, About Authority and Saction of International Law, Historical 3, About Authority and Saction of International Law, Historical, Classification of Law Materials, Classification schemes in the UK, Law Classification, Law Classification, Historical, Legal Abbreviations, Historical 3, Obligations: Classification, Primary vs. Secondary Authority, Right in Rem, Historical.


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