Where rights come from

The claim

The Declaration of Independence makes a claim that is easy to read past:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that 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 to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Two things are packed in here. First, rights come before government. They are not created by a legislature or a court. Second, government is a tool with a job: to secure rights people already have. Its authority is on loan from the people it governs.

Where the idea came from

John Locke, writing a century earlier in the Second Treatise of Government, worked out the logic the Declaration compresses. In his account, people in a "state of nature" already have rights to their lives, their liberty, and the fruits of their labor. What they lack is a reliable way to protect those rights. Every person is judge in their own case, and disputes turn into feuds.

So people agree to form a government. They hand over one thing: the power to enforce. They do not hand over the rights themselves. Locke is explicit that a government which turns on the rights it was created to protect has broken the agreement, and the people may replace it.

Why the source of rights matters

Ask where a right comes from and you learn who can take it away.

• If rights are grants from government, then government may revise them, condition them, or withdraw them. Whatever it gives, it can take.
• If rights are prior to government, then government's job is to protect them, and a government that violates them is acting outside its authority no matter what statute it cites.

This is not an abstract distinction. It decides whether a permit requirement, a speech restriction, or a property seizure is a question of policy or a question of legitimacy.

What "unalienable" means

Unalienable does not mean rights can never be violated. It means they cannot be rightfully transferred or surrendered. You can be silenced, but the right to speak does not vanish; it is being infringed. The word marks the difference between what is happening and what is just.

Try it

Pick a local rule you live under: a business license, a zoning limit, a curfew. Ask two questions. Which pre-existing right does it touch? And does it protect someone else's rights, or does it simply prefer one group's wishes over another's? Bring your answer to the discussion thread.

Sources are public domain: the Declaration of Independence (1776); Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1689), especially chapters 2 and 9.