What's a right anyway (and how do we know)?

No son, you don't have a right to dessert every night after dinner

When my children were younger, conversations about their “rights” would periodically crop up. And if you have kids (or know them), you know that they have strange ideas about what they have a right to. Most aren’t afraid to tell you what they think they’re entitled to, what they want or “need.” One of my cherubs claimed a right, as a preschooler, to dessert every night after dinner. Another time, one was determined she had a right not to sit next a particular sibling for a long car ride. In one discussion, an adolescent voiced a felt right to choose a school – in particular, not to go to one we were considering.

Strong feelings, advocation… “rights.”

My children saw a right as a wanted thing that the world, or their parents, was obliged to grant. One declares, “I have a right!”, lays out the case and then ideally (as they understood it) claims it.

Now that my children are teens, conversations about rights have morphed; they’re based on what they learn in school or hear from peers about rights. The question is, what rights do individuals actually have? Does everyone have a right to health care or housing, as some teach, or not?

Great questions. Many answers, depending on the source… and most of us regular folks swim in a sea of confusion. This is one reason I so appreciate natural law - the age-old set of universal truths, derived from nature and common to all humans, we discover through reason. Its application explains what rights are and how we correctly interact with them, clearing the whole matter up for those (like me) who hadn’t known. So here we go.

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A right is the flip side of a duty. A duty is an action done by a person is a specific case, and a right is an action owed to the other person. They’re the two ends of a commitment between parties.

For example: my spouse and I sell you our car, a commitment we make. We now have the duty to deliver the car to you. You have the right to take it from us.

Or: I’m hired by your company to do a job you’re paying me to do. I have the duty to do the job you hired me for, and your company has the right to hold me accountable for doing it.

Or again: I write an article about you. Implicit in the writing, I have a duty to report with accuracy the things you said or did. You have a right to expect that I will do so.

Or finally: I give birth to you. I have the duty to provide the things you need to live, and you have a right to expect me to do so.

In each case, there’s something specific that both parties are involved in, a commitment, that ties them together – creating a duty on one side and a right on the other. The acting person has the duty, and the other person (non-acting) has the right.

When we apply this concept, we see that if I have a right to housing, there’s a particular person/group who has a duty to provide it for me. If I have a right to receive money because I’m impoverished, there’s a particular person/group who has a duty to provide it to me. If I have a right to healthcare, there’s a particular doctor or group of doctors who has a duty to treat me.

A right and duty can’t involve an anonymous group or society at large. It may be good for people to provide housing to someone without it, or to give money to someone who doesn’t have any, or to give medical treatment to an injured person who lacks care. But there’s not a duty for any of these things to occur unless a specific commitment between two parties exists or has been made.

So rights and duties are specific, not universal. This is almost always the case.

In a very few cases, though, there are universal rights. They involve moral absolutes or “absolute prohibitions” - principles, always true, by which any person’s actions can be evaluated. They’re things that a person is never to do to another person because they always work against the basic goods. Moral absolutes are: do not kill or assault (except in self-defense). Do not enslave. Do not steal. Do not say anything untrue to damage a person’s reputation.

How do these relate to rights? Because absolute prohibitions mean every person has a duty not to kill or assault another person (except in self-defense). Not to enslave them or rob them. Not to say false things to damage another’s reputation. And on the flip side, every person has a right not to be killed or assaulted, not enslaved, stolen from, or defamed by another person. These are the (very few, and specific) universal rights.

That’s it. That’s how rights and duties work.

I have a right when a) specifically: a particular person/party is in commitment with me to do a certain duty relating to me. Or b) universally: when everybody has a duty to me, because of an absolute prohibition.

No other time.

So back to my children. They don’t have a right to dessert every day, to a problem-free spot in the family car, to choose their own school. They can and often do a desire or preference, but not a right.

And it may be good for me to offer my kids treats, wisely organize seating, give them a say in their schooling. But those things being good doesn’t mean my children have a right to any them.

And now I’m equipped to explain why!