“No Man should be condemned
unheard.”-----Lord Eshar
This is the basics of natural Law
and Natural rights. Philosophers and jurist did not leave human rights solely
to theologians. The latter used theology to present the basis of human rights theory
stemming from a law higher than the state and whose source is the Supreme
Being. The belief that human beings created in the image of god, endows human
with a worth and dignity. Here, Thomas Aquinas and Grotius defined human rights
as a dictate of rights reason’. The dictate of right reason focuses that as
human being every person have some rights which is rationale and realistic. All
these right have some logical and moral basis.
Natural Law theory led to natural
rights theory, and the chief exponent of that theory is John Locke. John Locke
argued that “all individuals were endowed by nature with the inherent rights to
life, liberty and property which were their own and could not be removed or
abrogated by state”. From the Locke’s point of view of natural rights he
emphasized on two areas-
Firstly, the individual is
an autonomous being capable of exercising choice and
Secondly, the legitimacy of
government depend not only the will of people but also upon the willingness and
ability to protect those individuals natural rights.
Rousseau, on the other hand, declared that natural law conferred in
alienable sovereignty on the citizens of the state as a whole. Thus, whatever
rights were derived from natural law dwelt within the people as a collectivity
and could be identified by reference to the general will.
Kant theory based on non-empirical natural law and natural rights
tradition suggested that the absolute of moral good, which is identifiable in
the exercise of virtuous, will by all rational individuals, to which he calls
‘Categorical imperative’. This operated at three levels:
First, it specifies universal acts of
duty on all individuals;
Second, it provides systematic rules
for deterring these duties, and
Finally, it specifies the relationship
between freedom and duties.
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