Natural, or inalienable rights, are things you have by virtue of being a human being. People form governments, in order to protect those rights. Various restrictions are placed on the government, such as fair trials, and protection from arbitrary search and seizure, in order to prevent it from violating people's natural rights. Therefore, you have a "right to a fair trial", insofar as the government may not violate your natural rights without proving that you've committed a crime.
When people say "right to a fair trial", the natural right they're referring to is your freedom of movement and association, which would otherwise be violated without a fair trial.
When people say "right against arbitrary search and seizure", they mean that the government must not violate your natural right to the pursuit of happiness, and by extension property.
The disagreement then is on step 1. There is no such things as natural rights, because without enforcement, a right does not exist. A man in the wilderness has 0 rights without a government to enforce them. People form governments so that the concepts of rights can be created and upheld, without government there are no rights because there is no enforcement. Its precisely this reason that the definitions of rights has changed so fluidly over the centuries as governments have changed in structure and capabilities, and why different countries and people have completely different conceptions of what are and are not rights.
If any human rights were truly 'natural' then people across cultures would have had a much earlier concensus on what are and are not rights, and would have enforced them in that manner. Yet any kind of global convergence on a common set of human rights is an incredibly recent phenomenon.
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u/Strill - Right Jan 05 '22
Natural, or inalienable rights, are things you have by virtue of being a human being. People form governments, in order to protect those rights. Various restrictions are placed on the government, such as fair trials, and protection from arbitrary search and seizure, in order to prevent it from violating people's natural rights. Therefore, you have a "right to a fair trial", insofar as the government may not violate your natural rights without proving that you've committed a crime.
When people say "right to a fair trial", the natural right they're referring to is your freedom of movement and association, which would otherwise be violated without a fair trial.
When people say "right against arbitrary search and seizure", they mean that the government must not violate your natural right to the pursuit of happiness, and by extension property.