The Negative right reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Negative right

Negative rights are rights from certain things, usually freedoms from abuse or coercion by others, as opposed to positive rights which are the rights or guarantees to certain things.

One example of a negative right is the 1st Amendment of the constitution of the USA, which prevents free speech from being reduced by laws.

See negative liberty and positive right.

The concept of a positive right is very similar to Isaiah Berlin's concept of Positive Liberty (an idea he was strongly critical of).

This is the "Negative right" reference article from the English Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.