Civil rights

Civil rights are the protections and privileges of personal liberty given to all citizens by law. Civil rights are distinguished from "human rights" or "natural rights"; civil rights are rights that persons do have, while natural or human rights are rights that many scholars think that people should have. For example, 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 state as an aspect of the social contract. Others have argued that people acquire rights as an inalieanble rights gift from God or at a time of nature before governments were formed.

References

• Hohfeld, W. N. Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, ed. by W.W. Cook (1919); reprint, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964.
• Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Basic Books. 1974.
• John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Revised edition, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 1999), ISBN 0-674-00077-3.