Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory. Rights are of essential importance in such disciplines as law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology.
According to some views, certain rights derive from deities or nature.
Do groups have rights? Some argue that when soldiers bond in combat, the group becomes like an organism in itself and has rights which trump the rights of any individual soldier.
Police officers in the United States are required to read the Miranda warning between making an arrest and beginning an interrogation. The warning informs the person arrested that they have rights included in the Fifth Amendment. Failure to "read Miranda" disqualifies evidence obtained primarily in the questioning.
Magna Carta or "The Great Charter" was one of England's first documents containing commitments by a king to his people to respect certain legal rights. It reduced the power of the monarch.
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the art of justice. State-enforced laws can be made by a group legislature or by a single legislator, resulting in statutes; by the executive through decrees and regulations; or established by judges through precedent, usually in common law jurisdictions. Private individuals may create legally binding contracts, including arbitration agreements that adopt alternative ways of resolving disputes to standard court litigation. The creation of laws themselves may be influenced by a constitution, written or tacit, and the rights encoded therein. The law shapes politics, economics, history and society in various ways and also serves as a mediator of relations between people.
Bentham's utilitarian theories remained dominant in law until the 20th century.
King Hammurabi is revealed the code of laws by the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash, also revered as the god of justice.
The Constitution of India is the longest written constitution for a country, containing 444 articles, 12 schedules, numerous amendments and 117,369 words.
Six judges of the Israel Supreme Court sitting at their bench in 1953
