The various types of rights

Introduction

Rights may be classified in several ways: by their basis (natural, moral, legal), by the sphere they cover (political, civil, economic, cultural) and by the period when they were recognised. The answer takes the main classifications.

Meaning and importance of rights

A right is an entitlement or a justified claim: what we may rightly claim as citizens, as individuals and simply as human beings, something that the rest of society must recognise as legitimate. Not everything that I want is a right; rights are those claims that I and others regard as necessary for a life of respect and dignity. They are claimed on two grounds, that they are conditions of dignity and self-respect (the right to livelihood, freedom of expression), and that they are necessary for well-being and the development of talents (the right to education). A claim that is injurious to others or to oneself, such as smoking or taking banned drugs, cannot be claimed as a right. Rights are claimed chiefly against the state: each right says what the state must do and what it must refrain from doing, so that rights place limits on the state's authority and make rulers accountable, for the state exists for the sake of the individual and not the reverse.

Kinds of rights

1. Political rights give citizens equality before law and the right to take part in the political process: to vote and elect representatives, contest elections, form or join parties. They are supplemented by civil liberties: a free and fair trial, free expression, protest and dissent. Together they are the basis of democratic government.
2. Economic and social rights secure the conditions for exercising political rights: food, shelter, clothing, health, a basic education and reasonable conditions of work. A person struggling on the pavement to meet basic needs gets little from the right to vote, so democracies increasingly provide housing, medical facilities, minimum wages and employment guarantees (in India, the rural employment guarantee scheme is NCERT's example).
3. Cultural rights include the right to primary education in one's mother tongue and to set up institutions teaching one's language and culture.

Some rights, to life, liberty, equal treatment and political participation, are seen as basic and must have priority; others are justified claims that are being recognised as societies develop. The list has grown as new threats appear: rights to clean air and water, sustainable development, and the rights of children.

Legal rights and moral rights

Legal rights are claims recognised and enforced by the state, and they come from the constitution and from ordinary laws alike: NCERT calls the rights of equal citizenship legal rights, secured by the constitution and laws. The highest of them are constitutional. A Bill of Rights is part of many constitutions, in India the Fundamental Rights, and because the constitution is the highest law this recognition gives those rights a primary importance, which other laws are expected to respect. Ordinary legislation creates legal rights too: in India the right to information was granted through a new law. Some theorists define rights as claims recognised by the state. But legal endorsement, though it gives a special status, is not the basis on which rights are claimed: rights have been expanded and reinterpreted to include previously excluded groups.

Moral rights rest on conscience and ethical principle, not on enactment. Kant's view is the example NCERT gives: every person has intrinsic dignity and must be treated as an end, not as a means; this moral conception of rights has been a rallying point for those struggling against social hierarchies. NCERT describes them as claims that "appeal to our moral self", and their success depends on support from governments and the law.

Relation. Moral rights supply the reason for demanding legal recognition (the history of rights is the history of moral claims turned into law by struggle) and legal rights supply enforcement. A legal right may be morally objectionable (laws that denied equal rights to some groups), and a moral right may be unenforceable until it is legislated. The legal right is enforceable by a court; the moral right is enforced by public opinion and conscience.

Other classifications

1. Natural rights, human rights and legal rights. These are three distinct ideas. Natural rights were held by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theorists to come from nature or God through natural law: people are born with them, they are inalienable, and they were three, life, liberty and property, from which the rest were derived. Human rights are now the more common term because a natural law set down by nature or God is no longer widely accepted; they rest instead on the view that every person, being human, is entitled to what a minimally good life requires, and they are guarantees that people themselves seek and agree on, not gifts of nature. Their list is not fixed: the UN Universal Declaration recognises the claims that the world community regards as important for dignity and self-respect, and new claims are added as societies meet new threats. Legal rights are those the state recognises and enforces through the constitution and laws; a human-rights claim appeals to our moral sense, and how far it succeeds depends on the support of governments and the law.
2. Individual and group rights. The right to a mother-tongue education and to set up cultural institutions is claimed by communities.
3. Positive and negative rights. Some rights require the state to refrain (liberty), others to act (education, employment).

Conclusion

Rights come in several kinds, and the list of rights has grown as societies faced new threats and challenges: from basic civil and political rights to economic, social and cultural rights, and now environmental and collective rights.