Right (n)
Etymology: Old English riht (West Saxon, Kentish), reht (Anglian), “that which is morally right, duty, obligation,” also “rule of conduct; law of a land;” also “what someone deserves; a just claim, what is due, equitable treatment;” also “correctness, truth;” also “a legal entitlement (to possession of property, etc.), a privilege,” from Proto-Germanic *rehtan (see right (adj.1)). In Middle English often contrasted to might or wrong. From early 14c. as “a right action, a good deed,” hence the right “that which is just or true, righteousness.”
(bef. 12c) 1. That which is proper under law, morality, or ethics <know right from wrong>. Cf. WRONG.
“Right and wrong, in the legal sense, are that which the law of the State allows and forbids, and nothing else. To understand this is one of the first conditions of clear legal and political thinking, and it is Hobbes’s great merit to have made this clear beyond the possibility of misunderstanding. No one who has grasped Hobbes’s definition can ever be misled by verbal conceits about laws of the State which are contrary to natural right, or the law of nature, not being binding. All such language is mischievous, as confusing the moral and political grounds of positive law with its actual force. In practice we all know that the officers of the State cannot entertain complaints that the laws enacted by the supreme power in the State are in the complainant’s opinion unjust. It would be impossible for government to be carried on if they did. Laws have to be obeyed, as between the State and the subject, not because they are reasonable, but because the State has so commanded. The laws may be, and in a wisely ordered State will be, the result of the fullest discussion which the nature of the case admits, and subsequent criticism may be allowed or even invited. But while the laws exist they have to be obeyed.” Frederick Pollock, An Introduction to the History of the Science of Politics 61 (1906).“It has come to be well understood that there is no more ambiguous word in legal and juristic literature than the word ‘right.’ In its most general sense it means a reasonable expectation involved in life in civilized society. As a noun it has been used in the law books in [four] senses. (1) One meaning is interest, as in most discussions of natural rights. Here it may mean (a) an interest one holds ought to be recognize and secured. It is generally used in this sense in treatises on ethics. Or (b) it may mean the interest recognized, delimited with regard to other recognized interests and secured. (2) A second meaning is a recognized claim to acts or forbearances by another or by all others in order to make the interest effective, (a) legally, through application of the force of a politically organized society in order to secure it as the law has delimited it, or (b) morally, by the pressure of the moral sentiment of the community or of extra-legal agencies of social control. Analytical jurists have put this as a capacity of influencing others which is recognized or conferred in order to secure an interest. (3) A third use is to designate a capacity of creating, divesting, or altering rights in the second sense and so of creating or altering duties. Here the proper term is ‘power.’ (4) A fourth use is to designate certain conditions of general or special non-interference with natural faculties of action; certain conditions on which the law secures interests by leaving one to the free exercise of his natural faculties. These are better called liberties and privileges — liberties, general conditions of hands off as to certain situations; privileges, special conditions of hands off exempting certain persons or persons under certain situations from the rules which apply to persons generally or apply to all persons in ordinary situations.” Roscoe Pound, The Ideal Element in Law 110–12 (1958) (mentioning five but reciting only four noun senses).
2. Something that is due to a person by just claim, legal guarantee, or moral principle <the right of liberty>. 3. A power, privilege, or immunity secured to a person by law <the right to dispose of one’s estate>. 4. A legally enforceable claim that another will do or will not do a given act; a recognized and protected interest the violation of which is a wrong <a breach of duty that infringes one’s right>. 5. (often pl.)The interest, claim, or ownership that one has in tangible or intangible property <a debtor’s rights in collateral> <publishing rights>. 6. The privilege of corporate shareholders to purchase newly issued securities in amounts proportionate to their holdings. 7. The negotiable certificate granting such a privilege to a corporate shareholder.
“Right is a correlative to duty; where there is no duty there can be no right. But the converse is not necessarily true. There may be duties without rights. In order for a duty to create a right, it must be a duty to act or forbear. Thus, among those duties which have rights corresponding to them do not come the duties, if such there be, which call for an inward state of mind, as distinguished from external acts or forbearances. It is only to acts and forbearances that others have a right. It may be our duty to love our neighbor, but he has no right to our love.” John Chipman Gray, The Nature and Sources of the Law 8–9 (2d ed. 1921).“[T]he word ‘right’ is one of the most deceptive of pitfalls; it is so easy to slip from a qualified meaning in the premise to an unqualified one in the conclusion. Most rights are qualified.” American Bank & Trust Co. v. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, 256 U.S. 350, 358, 41 S.Ct. 499, 500 (1921).“[I]n most European languages the term for law is identical with the term for right. The Latin jus, the German Recht, the Italian diritto, the Spanish derecho, the Slavonic pravo point both to the legal rule which binds a person and the legal right which every person claims as his own. Such coincidences cannot be treated as mere chance, or as a perversion of language likely to obscure the real meaning of words. On the contrary, they point to a profound connexion between the two ideas implied, and it is not difficult to see why expressions like jus and Recht face both ways: it may be said that on the one hand all private rights are derived from legal order, while, on the other hand, legal order is in a sense the aggregate of all the rights co-ordinated by it. We can hardly define a right better than by saying that it is the range of action assigned to a particular will within the social order established by law.” Paul Vinogradoff, Common Sense in Law 45 (H.G. Hanbury ed., 2d ed. 1946).“[In Hohfeldian terminology,] A is said to have a right that B shall do an act when, if B does not do the act, A can initiate legal proceedings that will result in coercing B. In such a situation B is said to have a duty to do the act. Right and duty are therefore correlatives, since in this sense there can never be a duty without a right.” E. Allan Farnsworth, Contracts § 3.4, at 114. n.3 (3d ed. 1999).