Individual and group rights

Individual rights, also known as natural rights, are rights held by individuals by virtue of being human. Some theists believe individual rights are bestowed by God. An individual right is a moral claim to freedom of action.[1]

Group rights, also known as collective rights, are rights held by a group as a whole rather than individually by its members;[2] in contrast, individual rights are rights held by individual people; even if they are group-differentiated, which most rights are, they remain individual rights if the right-holders are the individuals themselves.[3]

Individual rights and group rights are often incompatible. An appeal to group rights is often used to promote violation of individual rights. Historically, group rights have been used both to infringe upon and to facilitate individual rights, and the concept remains controversial.[4]

  1. ^ Tara Smith. "Moral rights and political freedom". archive.org.
  2. ^ "Group Rights (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Plato.stanford.edu. 2008-09-22. Retrieved 2015-03-30.
  3. ^ Jones (2010), p. 39ss
  4. ^ Bisaz (2012), pp. 7–12