On Rights
Some rights are natural.
They pre-exist.
...the pre-existent rights of nature....
The Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, First Congress, 1st Session, pp. 448-460
They are inalienable.
They are rights, in the purest sense of the word.
Of rights, some are natural and unalienable, of which even the people cannot deprive individuals....
Richard Henry Lee (1788) - An Additional Number of Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican, p. 51
We declare these rights.
Men, in some countries do not remain free, merely because they are entitled to natural and inalienable rights; men in all countries are entitled to them, not because their ancestors once got together and eunumerated them on paper, but because, by repeated negociations and declarations, all parties are brought to realize them, and of course to believe them to be sacred.
Richard Henry Lee (1788) - An Additional Number of Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican, p. 145
It's impossible to declare them all. They're innumerable.
Rights are unenumerable because rights define a private domain within which persons have a right to do as they wish, provided their conduct does not encroach upon the rightful domains of others.
Randy Barnett (1993) - The Rights Retained by the People , p. 8
Natural rights are retained by the people, including those we haven't declared.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Ninth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America
We measure our constitution and our government principally by these rights.
[G]overnment, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind.
James Wilson (1790?) - On the Natural Rights of Individuals - The Works of James Wilson (1896), p. 307
When granting powers to government, the people place limits on these powers. These limits can be similar to natural rights, in which case we call them rights, too.
Some [rights] are constitutional or fundamental; these cannot be altered or abolished by the ordinary laws; but the people, by express acts, may alter or abolish them--These, such as the trial by jury, the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, &c. individuals claim under the solemn compacts of the people, as constitutions or at least under laws so strenghthened by long usage as not to be repealable by the ordinary legislature....
Richard Henry Lee (1788) - An Additional Number of Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican'', p. 51
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