The OED wrote:
9. a. A legal, equitable, or moral title or claim to the possession of property or authority, the enjoyment of privileges or immunities, etc.; (by extension) an entitlement considered to arise through natural justice (whether or not enshrined in legislation) and which is applicable to all members of a particular group. Cf. sense 11. Freq. in pl. and with modifying word.
The rights commonly proposed by thinkers of the 17th cent. were natural rights, i.e. powers of acting in conformity with natural law. As belief in natural law fell away, moral rights and human rights, such as to life and liberty, came to be recognized as universal and to follow from being human.
See conjugal, fishing, mineral, moral, State rights, etc.; animal, children's, civil, human, minority, natural rights, etc., at first element; also BILL OF RIGHTS n., Declaration of Rights at DECLARATION n. 6, Petition of Rights at PETITION n. Phrases 1.
OE Agreement between Bishop Wærfer & Æelwold (Sawyer 1441) in F. E. Harmer Sel. Eng. Hist. Docs. 9th & 10th Cents. (1914) 24 a sona was Eelwald æs wordes æt he no es rihtes wisacan wolde. a1400 (a1325) Cursor Mundi (Vesp.) 3544 ou sal neuer forth fra to night In i forbirth do claim na right. 1489 (a1380) J. BARBOUR Bruce (Adv.) I. 78 He suld that arbytre disclar,..And lat him ryng that had the rycht. 1491-2 Rolls of Parl.: Henry VII (Electronic ed.) Parl. Oct. 1491 §13. m. 6, All suche right, title, interesse, cleyme..as they..have in any of the premisses. 1525 LD. BERNERS tr. J. Froissart Chron. II. lii[i]. 188 Let the ryght go to the ryght. 1544 tr. Littleton's Tenures (1574) 96 b, The donee to whom the release was made then had nothinge in the land, but onely a righte. 1612 Brechin Test. II. in Dict. Older Sc. Tongue f. 213v, Gif my bearne die that e will lat hir inioy the heretable richt. 1681 J. DALRYMPLE Inst. Law Scotl. (1693) II. i. 161 All Real Rights are either that original Community of all Men,..Or the Interest which Possession giveth, or Property. 1706 G. STANHOPE Paraphr. III. 334 After all our boast of Settlements and Estates, nothing is or can be settled, but the Fee and Original Right in the great universal Lord. 1768 L. STERNE Sentimental Journey I. 1 Strange!.. That one and twenty miles sailing..should give a man these rights. 1818 W. CRUISE Digest Laws (ed. 2) I. 172 The husband is entitled to all those rights and privileges which his wife would have had if she were alive, and which were annexed to her estate. a1853 F. W. ROBERTSON Lect. (1858) 747 Rights are grand things,..but the way in which we expound those rights..seems to me to be the very incarnation of selfishness. 1893 H. D. TRAILL Social England Introd. p. xiii, Association, however, necessarily creates rights and duties; from rights and duties spring law and government. 1915 F. M. HUEFFER Good Soldier IV. i. 226 She was really enraged when, after the invention was mature, he made a present to the War Office of the designs and the patent rights. 1963 B. FRIEDAN Feminine Mystique iv. 83 It is a cliché of our own time that women spent half a century fighting for ‘rights’. 1989 Aircraft Illustr. Feb. 74/1 Included in the change-over was the entire responsibility for international air transport affairs and, in particular, the authority of negotiating traffic rights. 2006 Observer 9 Apr. I. 11/2 Universalists argue that certain rights and protectionsfreedom of speech, democracy, the rule of laware common or, at least, should be available to all people.
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Corolinth wrote:
Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.