Rights are fundamentally about property, about
ownership. Every right is about establishing people's relationships
with abstract properties "characteristics" which are owned and
defined by that right. Earlier I mentioned the idea of the right to
privacy; "to be secure in one's personal effects" as being about the
right to own one's personal space. I also discussed the right to
freedom as the right to own one's own life-space. These are not new
ideas. In each case the properties involved are about not just "real-
estate" but also the more figurative ownership of one's thoughts,
one's products, one's ideas, one's words, etcetera. Rights are
permissions. Permissions are grants of ownership. And Abstract
rights are the assumed generalized permissions that all of
us "should" own.
Rights are about defining what we "own" and what we "don't own" in
our sphere of interactions with one another.
Thus at the basis of most further rights beyond those of the "right to
privacy" and related freedoms; liberal, rights, comes the issue of
rights as being about the question: "How in a social system do we
negotiate the 'pursuit of happiness?'" This goes to the issues of
agreement between people and justice -- about ownership.
Most of our more thorny rights issues come about as people negotiate
their way through the world of other people. As it has been said 'my
rights end where another person's begins." That means basically
"my rights" are the things I own. But I don't have rights to things I don't own. And if you claim something that I claim or want to claim, than we have a problem."
The reality of rights is that they don't end with just our own personal freedom or liberty. There is a whole different class of rights that has to do with how we bridge the question of "what do I do when someone else has something I want?"
This is an entire different class of rights. We are talking about those rights that bridge individual needs and actions defined between individuals. As we figure out what makes us happy or unhappy we have to exercise judgement. When we
exericise judgement we are entering the realm of "justice" -- where we
are our own judges.
When operating on our own, with our own resources, the judgements can
be simple. Do I eat spinach or lettuce? Do I put on a sweater or a
suit? Once we get agreement inside, we exercise a judgement and take an
action. The power to judge and make decisions is one of the things that
defines us as human beings. It also defines all the rights we live
under. Judgement calculates attributes. Attributes are the
characteristics and borders of actions and their consequences. We
operate perfectly free within our space, but under limits established
by the nature of that space itself. I wear a suit to an interview, or
to a meeting with my cients. I wear a sweater when it is cold. I wear a
sweater under my suit when both conditions are true. Judgement is also
about exercising power. If a person doesn't own a sweater, or isn't
strong enough to put it on. Then all the desire in the world to wear
one is for naught unless one gets help from someone else.
Judgement and agreement are also how we negotiate our "rights" as we
communicate with others. Travel and verbal communication are the way we
acquire the majority of our needs. We do this by exchange. We arrive at
exchange by making agreements with others. Those agreements establish
what we are willing to trade for what. They involve the exchange of
promises, communiations and delivery of goods, and actions (services).
At the heart of our pursuit of happiness is the exchange. The legal
term for exchange is "contract." It is by negotiating exchanges,
transactions and contracts with one another that we traverse the world.
Justice is about fair exchanges. It is about agreement. When we are
happy with our transactions we are happy with the world. An equal
exchange isn't about equal goods literally, but about equal
satisfaction from the exchange. We consider a transaction just when
both sides are happy with the result. Thus justice is at its core
about "happy transactions" -- about agreement between people and
agreeable exchange. Agreeable exchanges are "legitimate" by
definition. The legal is the lawful, and the law is about ensuring that
agreements, contracts and exchanges are "lawful", "legitimate", or
agreeable to all the parties.
Thus the most basic element of the law is the agreement or the
contract, which defines what properties a person owns and exchanges.