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Human Rights: Rules and Theory

Natural law and the origins of human rights theory

  • 3 things to know
  • Components 2 and 3

Overview

Social contract, as human rights theory uses the term, connection between natural law and the Nuremberg trials and describing human rights as pre-legal.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

What does natural law theory claim about the source of rights?

Key term

Which philosopher argued that people possess natural rights to life, liberty and property?

Key term

How does Thomas Hobbes describe life without a sovereign?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What does natural law theory claim about the source of rights?

    Model answer

    Natural law theory claims that certain rights exist independently of any human law-maker. Reason discovers those rights rather than a legislature creating them.

  2. 2

    Which philosopher argued that people possess natural rights to life, liberty and property?

    Model answer

    John Locke argued in the Second Treatise of Government that people hold natural rights to life, liberty and estate. Locke said government exists to protect those rights and forfeits authority if it destroys them.

  3. 3

    How does Thomas Hobbes describe life without a sovereign?

    Model answer

    Thomas Hobbes described the state of nature in Leviathan as a war of every person against every other. Hobbes concluded that subjects surrender freedom to a sovereign in exchange for security.

  4. 4

    What is the social contract, as human rights theory uses the term?

    Model answer

    The social contract is the idea that political authority rests on an agreement between the governed and the state. Legitimacy under the social contract depends on the state honouring the terms of that bargain.

  5. 5

    Which writer of 1791 defended the French Revolution in terms of the rights of man?

    Model answer

    Thomas Paine defended the revolution in Rights of Man, published in 1791. Paine argued that rights belong to each generation and cannot be signed away by an earlier one.

  6. 6

    What is the connection between natural law and the Nuremberg trials?

    Model answer

    The Nuremberg trials punished conduct that had been lawful under German domestic law. Natural law reasoning supplied the argument that some standards bind a state whatever its own statutes say.

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