RIGHTS, DUTIES, PRIVILIGES

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is one of the fundamental documents of the French Revolution, defining a set of individual rights and collective rights of all of the estates as one. The three estates - the clergy, the aristocracy, and the rest of the populace, known as the third estate.

The last article of the Declaration was adopted on August 26, 1789, by the National Constituent Assembly, as the first step toward writing a constitution. While it set forth fundamental rights, not only for French citizens but for all men without exception, it did not make any statement about the status of women, nor did it explicitly address slavery. It is, however, considered to be a precursor to international human rights instruments: "First Article – Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded only on the common utility."

In jurisprudence and law, a right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in civil society. Rights serve as rules of interaction between people, and, as such, they place constraints and obligations upon the actions of individuals or groups - if one has a right to life, this means that others do not have the liberty to kill him.

On the other hand Duty, refers to behaviour that is expected or required of the citizen Privilege, refers to something that can be conferred and revoked.

Most pre-modern conceptions of rights were hierarchical.

Most modern conceptions of rights are universalist and egalitarian. There are two main modern conceptions of rights: The idea of natural rights holds that there is a certain list of rights enshrined in nature that cannot be legitimately modified by any human power. The idea of legal rights holds that rights are human constructs, created by society, enforced by governments and subject to change.

Rights must be understood by someone in order to have legal existence, so the understanding of rights is a social prerequisite for the existence of rights. Therefore, educational opportunities within society have a close bearing upon the people's ability to erect adequate rights structures.

There are two fundamental controversies surrounding the notion of rights: First, there is the question of the basis for rights (on what basis rights can be said to exist). Second, there is the question of the content of rights (what the rights of a person actually are).

The specific enumeration of rights accorded to citizens has historically differed greatly from one century to the next, and from one regime to the next.

Generally speaking (within the English and European systems) a right corresponds with a complementary obligation that others have on the same object or realm. If someone has a right to something, simultaneously another party or parties have an obligation to do something (or to abstain from doing something) in order to respect that right or to give concrete execution to that right.

The doctrine of natural rights - these rights are universal: they are supposed to be valid in all times and places, pertaining to human nature itself. Societal rights or civil rights are bestowed to its citizenry by society and are a set of obligations that are purported as a social contract.

Civil rights are rights that are bestowed by nations on those within their territorial boundaries, while natural or human rights are rights that many scholars claim that individuals have by nature of being born.

The philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) argued that the natural rights of life, liberty and property should be converted into civil rights and protected by the sovereign state as an aspect of the social contract. Others have argued that people acquire rights as an inalienable gift from a deity (such as God) or at a time of nature before governments were formed.

Rights can be divided into Individual rights, that are held by citizens as individuals (or corporations) recognised by the legal system, Collective rights, that held by an ensemble of citizens or a subgroup of citizens who have a certain characteristic in common. Group rights are rights held by all members of a group in certain countries, solely by virtue of being in that group.

"Individual rights" are the rights of individuals by virtue of their humanness, i.e. their nature as sentient beings. Individual rights are an individual's moral claim to freedom of action. Such rights may be respected or recognized by others for reasons of reciprocity, contract, pragmatism, or as a moral imperative.

Individual rights are often codified into law so that they may be protected by impartial third parties such as the government. Governments that respect individual rights often provide for systemic controls that protect individual rights such as a system of “due process" in criminal justice. With respect to individual rights the role of the government is as a third party protecting, identifying and enforcing the rights of the individual while attempting to assure just remedies for transgressions.

Collective rights refers to rights which are held and exercised by all the people collectively, or by specific subsets of the people. This category of rights is large and heterogeneous: it includes the purported right of trade unions to bargain collectively, the right to bring class action suits, and most prominently the right to democratic self determination.

Group rights are not universalized as individual rights are, since not all individuals have the same rights, except in countries where all individuals are guaranteed the same rights. One example of such a system would be South Africa under the former apartheid regime, when all whites had group rights that others did not have, by virtue of being in that group.

Due Process of Law : It is the principle that the government must respect all of a person's legal rights instead of just some or most of those legal rights when the government deprives a person of life, liberty, or property. Due process has also been frequently interpreted as placing limitations on laws and legal proceedings, in order for judges instead of legislators to guarantee fundamental fairness, justice, and liberty. The latter interpretation is analogous to the concepts of natural justice and procedural justice used in various other jurisdictions.

Natural justice includes the notion of procedural fairness and may incorporate the following guidelines: A person accused of a crime, or at risk of some form of loss, should be given adequate notice about the proceedings. A person making a decision should declare any personal interest they may have in the proceedings. A person who makes a decision should be unbiased and act in good faith. He therefore can not be one of the parties in the case, or have an interest in the outcome. No man is permitted to be judge in his own cause. Proceedings should be conducted so they are fair to all the parties - expressed in the Latin maxim audi alteram partem: "let the other side be heard". Each party to a proceeding is entitled to ask questions and contradict the evidence of the opposing party. A decision-maker should take into account relevant considerations and extenuating circumstances, and ignore irrelevant considerations. Justice should be seen to be done. If the community is satisfied that justice has been done, they will continue to place their faith in the courts.

Human rights refers to "the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law.” The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) states, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

The division of human rights into three generations was initially proposed in 1979 by the Czech jurist Karel Vasak at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg. He used the term at least as early as November 1977. Vasak's theories have primarily taken root in European law, as they primarily reflect European values. His divisions follow the three watchwords of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

First-generation human rights First-generation human rights (FGHR) deal essentially with liberty and participation in political life. They are fundamentally civil and political in nature, and serve to protect the individual from excesses of the state. First-generation rights include, among other things, freedom of speech, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, and voting rights.

Second-generation human rights Second-generation human rights are related to equality and began to be recognized by governments after World War I. They are fundamentally social, economic, and cultural in nature. They ensure different members of the citizenry equal conditions and treatment. Secondary rights would include a right to be employed, rights to housing and health care, as well as social security and unemployment benefits.

Third-generation human rights Third-generation human rights are those rights that go beyond the mere civil and social, as expressed in many progressive documents of International law. Because of the principle of sovereignty and the preponderance of would-be offender nations, these rights have been hard to enact in legally binding documents.

Social Contract

The first modern philosopher to articulate a detailed contract theory was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who contended that people in a state of nature ceded their individual rights to create sovereignty, retained by the state, in return for their protection and a more functional society, so social contract evolves out of pragmatic self-interest. Hobbes named the state Leviathan, thus pointing to the artifice involved in the social contract.

Without society, we would live in a state of nature, where we each have unlimited natural freedoms. The downside of this general autonomy is that it includes the "right to all things" and thus the freedom to harm all who threaten one's own self-preservation; there are no positive rights, only laws of nature and an endless "war of all against all“. In other words, anyone in the state of nature can do anything he likes; but this also means that anyone can do anything he likes to anyone else. To avoid this, we jointly agree to a social contract by which we each gain civil rights in return for subjecting ourselves to civil law or to political authority. In Hobbes' formulation, the sovereign power is not a party of the contract but instead the sovereign is its creation, and so is not bound by it.

Alternatively, some have argued that we gain civil rights in return for accepting the obligation to respect and defend the rights of others, giving up some freedoms to do so; this alternative formulation of the duty arising from the social contract is often identified with militia, or defense activity.

The social contract and the civil rights it gives us are neither “natural" nor permanently fixed. Rather, the contract itself is the means towards an end — the benefit of all — and (according to some philosophers such as Locke or Rousseau), is only legitimate to the extent that it meets the general interest. Therefore, when failings are found in the contract, we renegotiate to change the terms, using methods such as elections and legislature. Locke theorized the right of rebellion in case of the contract leading to tyranny.

A fundamental right is a right that has its origin in a country's constitution or that is necessarily implied from the terms of that constitution. These fundamental rights usually encompass those rights considered natural human rights. A constitutional right is a right granted by a government's constitution (on the national or sub-national level), and cannot be legally denied by that government.

Inalienable rights (or unalienable rights) refers to a set of human rights that are fundamental, are not awarded by human power, and cannot be surrendered. They are by definition, rights retained by the people. Inalienable rights may be defined as natural rights or human rights, but natural rights are not required by definition to be inalienable.

One cannot give up the capacity for private judgment (e. g One cannot give up the capacity for private judgment (e.g., about religious questions) regardless of any external contracts or oaths to religious or secular authorities so that right is "unalienable." In discussions of social contract theory, "inalienable rights" were said to be those rights that could not be surrendered by citizens to the sovereign.

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