History of Inalienable Rights
The history of inalienable rights, also referred to as “unalienable rights,” takes us back at least as far as the philosophy found in Athens in the 3rd Century B.C. Centuries later, as the Age of Enlightenment rolled through 17th Century Europe, as the common people fought the idea that only those born to the monarchy were endowed with unquestionable rights, the concept of inalienable rights was used to challenge the rights of kings.
As society progressed, natural rights were used to justify the establishment of social contracts, laws that established specific rights for individuals or groups, finally a government to protect legal rights. The concept of inalienable rights had made its mark on the world, though there has been much controversy and differing beliefs on what such rights are. Philosophers and scholars, who held widely differing beliefs, generally agree on the one point that inalienable rights are something that cannot be taken from the people, even at the hands of the government.
For example, John Locke, 17th Century English philosopher, discussed the concept of natural rights as he advanced the idea that life, liberty, and property were fundamental rights that people could not be forced to surrender. It was Thomas Jefferson who later adopted Locke’s belief with the slightly modified statement placed at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence:
“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.”
George Mason, delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, in the text of his home state’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, said:
“all men are born equally free,” and hold “certain inherent natural rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity.”
Thomas Jefferson relied heavily on the writings of Francis Hutcheson in his Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, in which he made a distinction between alienable and inalienable rights. Hutcheson stated:
“For wherever any Invasion is made upon unalienable Rights, there must arise either a perfect, or external Right to Resistance … Unalienable Rights are essential Limitations in all Governments.”
And
“[T]here can be no Right, or Limitation of Right, inconsistent with, or opposite to the greatest public Good.”
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