Right
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Right
In an abstract sense, justice, ethical correctness, or harmony with the rules of law or the principles of morals. In a concrete legal sense, a power, privilege, demand, or claim possessed by a particular person by virtue of law.
Each legal right that an individual possesses relates to a corresponding legal duty imposed on another. For example, when a person owns a home and property, he has the right to possess and enjoy it free from the interference of others, who are under a corresponding duty not to interfere with the owner's rights by trespassing on the property or breaking into the home.
In Constitutional Law, rights are classified as natural, civil, and political. Natural rights are those that are believed to grow out of the nature of the individual human being and depend on her personality, such as the rights to life, liberty, privacy, and the pursuit of happiness.
Civil Rights are those that belong to every citizen of the state, and are not connected with the organization or administration of government. They include the rights of property, marriage, protection by law, freedom to contract, trial by jury, and the like. These rights are capable of being enforced or redressed in a civil action in a court.
Political rights entail the power to participate directly or indirectly in the establishment or administration of government, such as the right of citizenship, the right to vote, and the right to hold public office.
right
1) n. an entitlement to something, whether to concepts like justice and due process, or to ownership of property or some interest in property, real or personal. These rights include various freedoms, protection against interference with enjoyment of life and property, civil rights enjoyed by citizens such as voting and access to the courts, natural rights accepted by civilized societies, human rights to protect people throughout the world from terror, torture, barbaric practices and deprivation of civil rights and profit from their labor, and such American constitutional guarantees as the right to freedoms of speech, press, religion, assembly and petition. 2) adj. just, fair, correct. (See: civil rights, marital rights)
RIGHT. This word is used in various senses: 1. Sometimes it signifies a law,
as when we say that natural right requires us to keep our promises, or that
it commands restitution, or that it forbids murder. In our language it is
seldom used in this sense. 2. It sometimes means that quality in our actions
by which they are denominated just ones. This is usually denominated
rectitude. 3. It is that quality in a person by which he can do certain
actions, or possess certain things which belong to him by virtue of some
title. In this sense, we use it when we say that a man has a right to his
estate or a right to defend himself. Ruth, Inst. c. 2, Sec. 1, 2, 3;
Merlin,; Repert. de Jurisp. mot Droit. See Wood's Inst. 119.
2. In this latter sense alone, will this word be here considered. Right
is the correlative of duty, for, wherever one has a right due to him, some
other must owe him a duty. 1 Toull. n. 96.
3. Rights are perfect and imperfect. When the things which we have a
right to possess or the actions we have a right to do, are or may be fixed
and determinate, the right is a perfect one; but when the thing or the
actions are vague and indeterminate, the right is an imperfect one. If a man
demand his property, which is withheld from him, the right that supports his
demand is a perfect one; because the thing demanded is, or may be fixed and
determinate.
4. But if a poor man ask relief from those from whom he has reason to
expect it, the right, which supports his petition, is an imperfect one;
because the relief which he expects, is a vague indeterminate, thing. Ruth.
Inst. c. 2, Sec. 4; Grot. lib. 1, c. Sec. 4.
5. Rights are also absolute and qualified. A man has an absolute right
to recover property which belongs to him; an agent has a qualified right to
recover such property, when it had been entrusted to his care, and which has
been unlawfully taken out of his possession. Vide Trover.
6. Rights might with propriety be also divided into natural and civil
rights but as all the rights which man has received from nature have been
modified and acquired anew from the civil law, it is more proper, when
considering their object, to divide them into political and civil rights.
7. Political rights consist in the power to participate, directly or
indirectly, in the establishment or management of government. These
political rights are fixed by the constitution. Every citizen has the right
of voting for public officers, and of being elected; these are the political
rights which the humblest citizen possesses.
8. Civil rights are those which have no relation to the establishment,
support, or management of the government. These consist in the power of
acquiring and enjoying property, of exercising the paternal and marital
powers, and the like. It will be observed that every one, unless deprived of
them by a sentence of civil death, is in the enjoyment of his civil rights,
which is not the case with political rights; for an alien, for example, has
no political, although in the full enjoyment of his civil rights.
9. These latter rights are divided into absolute and relative. The
absolute rights of mankind may be reduced to three principal or primary
articles: the right of personal security, which consists in a person's legal
and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health,
and his reputation; the right of personal liberty, which consists in the
power of locomotion, of changing situation, or removing one's person to
whatsoever place one's inclination may direct, without any restraint, unless
by due course of law; the right of property, which consists in the free use,
enjoyment, and disposal of all his acquisitions, without any control or
diminution, save only by the laws of the land. 1 Bl. 124 to 139.
10. The relative rights are public or private: the first are those which
subsist between the people and the government, as the right of protection on
the part of the people, and the right of allegiance which is due by the
people to the government; the second are the reciprocal rights of husband
and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward, and master and servant.
11. Rights are also divided into legal and equitable. The former are
those where the party has the legal title to a thing, and in that case, his
remedy for an infringement of it, is by an action in a court of law.
Although the person holding the legal title may have no actual interest, but
hold only as trustee, the suit must be in his name, and not in general, in
that of the cestui que trust. 1 East, 497 8 T. R. 332; 1 Saund. 158, n. 1; 2
Bing. 20. The latter, or equitable rights, are those which may be enforced
in a court of equity by the cestui que trust. See, generally, Bouv. Ins t.
Index, h.t. Remedy.
RIGHT, WRIT OF. Breve de recto. Vide Writ of light.