Natural rights are the subset of moral rights that human beings possess as a result of their nature, independent of the laws or customs of any particular society. They are usually contrasted with legal rights, which stem from legal systems and can be modified or repealed by said systems. Human rights are historically derived from natural rights theories, but 20th century human-rights discussions and legislation often do not depend on natural rights foundations.
Political scientists and philosophers distinguish an older, objective notion of ius ("what is just") from the modern senses of a right as something a person has. Natural rights theory reached a high point in early modern Europe due to the work of Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Samuel von Pufendorf, and especially John Locke. The idea has been contested from the start. Jeremy Bentham denied that there are rights "anterior to the establishment of government" and called natural and imprescriptible rights "rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts."
Concept and vocabulary In the classical, objective sense, "right" means what is just or what is due. Aristotle's dikaion and Ulpian's formulation of justice as rendering unto each his ius belong to this particular usage. The modern subjective sense treats rights as powers, entitlements, or abilities which belong to a person. When exactly the shift between the classical objective and modern subjective senses occurred is the subject of an ongoing dispute.
The American jurist Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld categorized rights into four types: privilege, claim, power, and immunity. Natural rights arguments typically mix these types. Under Hohfeld's typology, the right not to be assaulted would be considered a claim right to non-interferences, whereas the right to acquire unowned resources would be parsed as a privilege right plus a power right.
Natural rights are a subset of moral rights, not a synonym for legal rights or for human rights, as they exist irrespective of context. Some divide rights into negative rights (non-interference) and positive rights (provision of a good or service). This particular dichotomy is popular among normative theorists, "especially those with a bent towards libertarianism." Others reject this typology. Stephen Holmes and Cass Sunstein argue that all rights are positive once one accounts for state enforcement of what would otherwise be negative rights. The American philosopher Henry Shue considers security and subsistence to be "basic rights" as they are prerequisite for the enjoyment of others. British philosopher Onora O'Neill disagrees, writing that many supposed "natural" positive rights lack determinate duty-bearers outside institutions such as law enforcement.
Historiography of origins Many believe that classical and early medieval languages did not have a word for "right" in the sense of individual rights - whether they be natural rights, legal rights, or any of the other sorts of rights now recognized in the modern era. Alasdair MacIntyre wrote that there is no expression in classical Hebrew, Greek, Latin, or Arabic equivalent to the modern notion of individual rights, with the concept not appearing linguistically until about 1400. Benjamin Constant also held that classical peoples had no conception of individual rights.
Others propose a that a subjective sense of ius existed earlier. Brian Tierney points to the twelfth-century's Decretists' writings on canon law. In their writings, the Decretists would often refer to ius naturale (natural right) to refer to powers or faculties inherent to a person. Richard Tuck puts the origin at the beginning of early modern natural-rights theory. Annabel Brett's work follows similar usages from late-medieval and Spanish scholastic debate on liberty, dominion, and the limits of the state. The Cambridge History of Rights (vol. 1, 2025) compiles modern arguments that the thesis that classical peoples had no conception of individual rights is overstated.
That said, classical writers did supply ideas which were later used by natural rights theorists. The Stoics, for example, thought human beings share a rational nature and deny that anyone is a slave by nature, with Seneca the Younger distinguishing bondage of the body from that of the mind. Cicero thought, along the same line, not just that humans are "born for justice," but that right is based "not upon men's opinions, but upon nature."
Jean Gerson, in works including De Vita Spirituali Animae (1402), defined a right as a faculty or power belonging to anyone according to right reason and derived natural rights of self-defense and liberty from this basis. Sixteenth-century members of the Spanish School of Salamanca used nature based rights language in their analysis of the Spanish conquest of the New World. A leading example is Francisco de Vitoria's De Indis (1539), in which he argued that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were rational human beings, the true owners of their lands, the legitimate governors of their communities, and that neither paganism nor lack of baptism stripped them of the rights they possessed by nature. Later members of the school, including Domingo de Soto and Francisco Suárez, continued to treat dominion and jurisdiction as grounded in human nature rather than in Christian faith alone.
Early modern high point
Hugo Grotius in De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625) defined a right (ius) as "a moral quality of a person, making it possible to have or to do something correctly." He derived basic permissive rights of self-preservation and of acquiring and retaining things useful for life from the observation of human nature. He also argued that the validity of natural law isn't dependent on the existence of God, laying a crucial groundwork for future thinkers.
Thomas Hobbes emphasized the individual and pre-political nature of natural rights. In Leviathan (1651) he defined the right of nature (ius naturale) as "the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own life." He observed that in the state of nature this liberty extended to "a Right to every thing; even to one anothers' body," thus creating an untenable state of war of all against all. He thus derived the need for individuals to lay down many of their rights and authorize a sovereign, retaining only the residual liberties directly necessary for life. Hobbes thus made natural right prior to civil law, and civil law a natural response to natural right. This priority was used to justify nearly unlimited sovereignty rather than the later notions of limited government.
The German jurist Samuel von Pufendorf later reconstructed natural law in response to Grotius and Hobbes in his 1672 work De jure naturae et gentium (The Nature of Law and Nations). According to Knud Haakonssen's reading, Pufendorf doesn't treat ius as an innate quality or power of the natural human being, but rather as an acquired moral quality. The rights he calls "natural" are those that are derived from the law of nature, and natural equality includes equal obligations under said law.
John Locke, in his Two Treatises of Government, published in 1689, posited that individuals are - by nature - born free, equal, and have rights to life, liberty, and estate (property) which do not depend on the laws of any particular society. He wrote that reason, as the law of nature, teaches that "being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions." He elaborates that each person has "a Property in his own Person," that labor mixed with previously unowned resources can generate private property, subject to the condition that "enough, and as good" is left for others. Historians of philosophy dispute exactly to what degree Locke drove the ideas behind American founding, some believe he was a main driver (e.g. Pangle, Zuckert), whereas others point to English common-law and inherited-rights arguments (e.g. Reid).
Eighteenth-century political use 18th century writers (including the founding fathers of the US) argued that natural rights are inherent, often unalienable claims that exist prior to government and that governments ought to be instituted to secure them.
Francis Hutcheson distinguished alienable from unalienable rights, i.e. rights that can't be transferred, or for which transfer would be of no value, he treated as unalienable. Enumerated among these unalienable rights were the rights of private judgement, serving God according to conscience, and the control and ownership of one's life and limbs. In later work he elaborated that the rights to life and liberty are unalienable, while clarifying that the right to goods is alienable, as goods can be transferred for value.
William Blackstone popularized a legal statement of the same idea for English readers. In Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769) he defined the "absolute rights of individuals" as those which belong to persons "merely in a state of nature" and which every man is entitled to enjoy "whether out of society or in it." The principal aim of society, he wrote, is to protect those rights, "vested in them by the immutable laws of nature." He reduced them to three primary articles: personal security, personal liberty, and private property.
George Mason's 1776 draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights asserted the existence of "inherent natural Rights" to life, liberty, the means of acquiring property, and the pursuit of happiness and safety, none of which could be alienated through a compact. The version which was ratified later that year kept the aforementioned list, but with the addition: "when they enter into a state of society," which was understood to exclude enslaved people from the compact.
The 1776 United States Declaration of Independence famously reads: "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 governments are formed "to secure these rights," and that the people have the right to alter or abolish a government which does appropriately secure said rights. Thomas Jefferson in his 1825 letter to Henry Lee listed Cicero, Aristotle, Locke, and Algernon Sidney among the "elementary books of public right" behind "the American mind." "Pursuit of Happiness" in place of Locke's "property," and the usage of "unalienable," are reflective of the documentary record, and themselves do not settle the dispute over Locke's degree of influence on the philosophy of the American founding.
Thomas Paine in his 1791 essay series Rights of Man, argued that it's "a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights" and that charters take rights away from those they exclude. He elaborates by clarifying that rights are inherent and that government only arises through cooperation amongst rights-bearing individuals.
The 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen () asserted the "natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man." In Article 2 the aim of political association as the protection and preservation of "natural and imprescriptible rights of man" is stated; the rights to liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression are among those enumerated in the document.
Human rights and the twentieth century Scholars such as Peter Jones, consider natural rights to be the foundation of the modern notion of human rights. The preamble to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights speaks of "the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family," without explicitly requiring a natural law foundation for those rights.