3 ms·

Don't most legal systems view rights as people's birth right, or "government created"?

• tptacek 13y ago
  I thought they tended to see rights as the product of a social contract.
  • baddox 13y ago
    Is that the case? I thought social contract theory was primarily a response to the moral crisis experienced by Enlightenment philosophers upon the realization that government does many things which appear to be clear violations of "natural" rights.
• cheald 13y ago
  The Founding Fathers didn't. In their view, government exists to secure rights, not to grant them. > We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.