individual rights

Examples of individual rights in the following topics:

• Individualism

  • Individualism is a philosophy that stresses the value and rights of the individual vis-a-vis society and government.
  • Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses the moral worth of the individual.
  • Individualism, sometimes closely associated with certain variants of anarchism or liberalism, typically takes it for granted that individuals know best and that public authority or society has no right to interfere in a person's decision-making process, unless a very compelling need to do so arises (and maybe not even in those circumstances).
  • Individualists are chiefly concerned with protecting individual autonomy against obligations imposed by social institutions (such as the state or religious morality).
  • Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labor, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right to privacy, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and association, and the right to marry and have a family.

• The Second Amendment

  • The Second Amendment gives the right to bear arms, and can arguably apply to individuals or state militias depending on interpretation.
  • The Second Amendment to the US constitution was adopted in 1791 as part of the US Bill of Rights .
  • The amendment reads "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. " In some interpretations of the bill the right to bear arms is a collective right, exclusively or primarily given to states to arm a militia.
  • Others interpret it as an individual right enabling people to keep and bear arms outside of any organization for other lawful uses.
  • Heller (2008) have leaned towards the individual interpretation of the amendment.

• Introduction to Property Rights

  • In addition to private property, rights there are also public property rights and common property rights.
  • Private property rights, in theory should apply to individuals but often private property rights is applied to publicly chartered organizations.
  • This natural right to property stems from the fact that the individual has a right to their own labour and therefore a property right to the fruits of that labour when mixed with un-owned resources.
  • He argues that the individual has a right to acquire property so long as nothing is wasted and there are sufficient resources left for others (Locke, pp 115-126).
  • "It seems to me that, in general, the freedom of the individual by no means need to be extended to give all these freedoms to organized groups of individuals, and even that it may on occasion be the duty of governments to protect the individual against organized groups.

• The Constitutional Right to Petition the Government

  • The American right of petition is derived from British precedent.
  • In Blackstone's Comment, Last published in 1765, Americans in the Thirteen Colonies read that "the right of petitioning the king, or either house of parliament, for the redress of grievances" was a "right appertaining to every individual. "
  • Historically, the right can be traced back to English documents such as Magna Carta, which, by its acceptance by the monarchy, implicitly affirmed the right, and the later Bill of Rights 1689, which explicitly declared the "right of the subjects to petition the king. "
  • The right to petition includes under its umbrella the right to sue the government, and the right of individuals, groups and possibly corporations to lobby the government.
  • The right to petition is protected by the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

• Defining and Defending Property Rights

  • Resources can be owned and used by governments, collective bodies, or individuals.
  • They are the right to:
  • Ownership means that the entity or individual has the rights to the proceeds of the output that the property generates.
  • Common property: also called collective property, this type of property is owned by a group of individuals.
  • Economics sets the property rights and the law is used to enforce the rights.

• Market Exchange and Efficiency

  • Individuals voluntarily contract among themselves.
  • The individuals exchange goods that are characterized by nonattenuated property rights.
  • Nonattenuated property rights are exclusive, enforceable and transferable.
  • Since exchanges are perceived to be voluntary, no individual would choose to make themselves worse off.
  • Voluntary markets of goods with nonattenuated property rights are consistent with the Utilitarian Ethic and Pareto Efficiency.

• Private Property Rights

  • The prevailing system of property rights in the community is, them, the sum of economic and social relations with respect to scarce resources in which individuals stand to each other.
  • This definition implies that an individual has a bundle of rights or claims empowering him or her to control the outcome of specific events or alternatives.
  • Private property rights implies that the individual has the power to determine the use of an economic "good" and incurs all benefits and cost associated with that use.
  • There may be costs or benefits that impact individuals who are not engaged in the actual use of the good.
  • In some cases it is technically impossible to exclude (prevent an individual) individuals from the consumption and benefits of a produced economic good.

• Natural Rights

  • Natural rights, understood as those that are not dependent on the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and therefore universal and inalienable, were central to the Enlightenment debates on the relation between the individual and the government.
  • Natural rights are usually juxtaposed with the concept of legal rights.
  • At the time, natural rights developed as part of the social contract theory that addressed the questions of the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual. 
  • Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority), in exchange for protection of their remaining rights.
  • Such rights were thought to be natural rights, independent of positive law.

• Control and Preemption

  • A shareholder or stockholder is an individual or institution (including a corporation) that legally owns a share of stock in a public or private corporation.
  • These rights may include:
  • A preemption right, or right of preemption, is a contractual right to acquire certain property coming into existence before it can be offered to any other person or entity.
  • The incentive to exercise this option is based on the desire to protect individual ownership or stake in a company from dilution.
  • The conditions of preemptive rights will vary from company to company and share type to share type.

• Citizenship Rights

  • Citizenship carries both rights and responsibilities, as it describes a person with legal rights within a given political order.
  • Constitution and Bill of Rights.
  • Constitution and Bill of Rights.
  • Legally, citizenship denotes a link between an individual and a state.
  • More generally, citizenship is seen as the relation between an individual and a particular nation.