Abstract: Can artificial rights be natural? Of course not! Natural rights are “by definition” natural and consequently not artificial or conventional. The distinction between physis and nomos is as old as philosophy. Natural rights are those that we have prior to and independently of law and government. They are the rights we appeal to when we criticize unjust states and their unjust practices. Slavery is a serious injustice even if it is lawful. 

It is however puzzling where natural rights come from, or if there are any at all. They have been dismissed as “nonsense on stilts”. Most rights, after all, come from laws or from custom. Many if not most “human rights” of the kind favored today issue from legal agreements or custom and consequently are different from traditional natural rights. I will explore a slightly different way of understanding what makes these rights natural, and that will enable us to understand how they emerge from convention and yet are natural. I’ll take up an important argument against this way of thinking. My account will also explain how morality broadly understood can be natural. I will suggest some reasons why philosophers have resisted the suggestion I am defending. 

Christopher Morris is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Maryland and former chair of department. His interests are in moral, political, and legal philosophy and the theory of practical rationality.