A policymaker argues that a certain person's liberty should be restricted because doing so will significantly increase overall social welfare. A natural rights theorist would most directly respond:
AThe welfare calculation is probably incorrect
BRights grounded in rational dignity cannot be overridden simply because doing so would maximize aggregate utility
CLiberty restrictions are always acceptable when approved by democratic majority
DGovernment authority includes the right to restrict liberty whenever it chooses
This is the key structural distinction natural rights theory makes against utilitarianism. If rights derive from rational dignity — the intrinsic worth of persons as rational beings — then they cannot be overridden for utility calculations. A right that can be violated whenever the aggregate benefit is large enough isn't a genuine natural right; it's just a preference that yields when stronger preferences oppose it. Natural rights are supposed to be precisely the constraints that utility calculations cannot override.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
Locke argues that by mixing your labor with unowned land, you come to own the result. Which objection most directly challenges the internal logic of this argument?
AProperty rights require a state to enforce them, so pre-political property is incoherent
BWhy does mixing your labor with something create ownership rather than simply losing your labor in the resource?
CUnowned land doesn't exist because indigenous peoples already occupied it
DLocke was writing to justify colonial expansion, so his argument is politically motivated
This is the internal philosophical objection: the argument's own logic doesn't quite work. If I pour my can of tomato juice into the ocean, I don't own the ocean — I've just lost my juice. Why is mixing labor relevantly different? Why does infusing labor into something transmit ownership rather than diluting it? Nozick raised this objection directly. The other answers are important critiques but challenge the historical application of the theory or question its political context, rather than the logical structure of the labor-mixing argument itself.
Question 3 True / False
According to natural rights theory, rights are legitimate because governments have enacted and agreed to protect them through law.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
This gets the theory backwards. Natural rights are pre-political — they exist prior to and independently of any government. Their legitimacy comes from human nature or rational dignity, not from legal enactment. This is the theory's defining claim and what makes it useful as a basis for political critique: if rights depended on government for their existence, you couldn't use them to argue that a government is acting illegitimately. Legal positivism holds the view being described here; natural rights theory explicitly rejects it.
Question 4 True / False
Natural rights theorists and legal positivists disagree about whether rights can exist independently of what a state has enacted into law.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
This is the core fault line between the two views. Legal positivists (like Bentham and Austin) hold that law is whatever the sovereign enacts, and rights are legal constructs with no existence outside that system. Natural rights theorists hold that some rights exist prior to and independently of any legal system — and can be used to evaluate whether legal systems are just. The disagreement is foundational: it determines whether you can call a law unjust or illegitimate on moral grounds that go beyond the law itself.
Question 5 Short Answer
Why do social constructivists reject natural rights theory, and what alternative account of rights do they offer?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Social constructivists argue that rights are not discovered features of human nature but human inventions — conventions created by societies to protect interests and solve coordination problems. Rights have no existence independent of the social practices that sustain them. Rather than being grounded in a universal human nature, rights are cultural constructs whose content varies across societies and history.
The constructivist challenge is powerful because it doesn't deny that rights talk is useful or that rights claims matter — it denies that natural rights theory correctly explains what makes rights claims true or binding. If rights are social constructs, then the question becomes: which rights should we construct and maintain? This shifts from metaphysics (what rights naturally exist?) to normative political theory (what rights conventions should we adopt?). The implication is that natural rights theory's universalist pretensions — the idea that all humans everywhere have the same rights by nature — are themselves a particular cultural and political stance rather than a neutral discovery.