Human Rights as Natural Rights

Author(s): Jack Donnelly

Source: Human Rights Quarterly, Summer, 1982, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Summer, 1982), pp. 391-405

Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Original source: : https://www.jstor.org/stable/762225

It is a common assumption that a natural rights theory of human rights underlies contemporary human rights doctrines. The term human rights is generally taken to mean what Locke and his successors meant by natural rights: namely, rights (entitlements) held simply by virtue of being a person(human being).’ Such rights are natural in the sense that their source is human nature.