"There are natural limitations on the pursuit of happiness, the use of property, and the exercise of freedom. This DOES NOT argue for a conflict or clash of “rights”. It simply recognizes that any right belonging to more than one is NECESSARILY a limited right."
So, where I say the law defines the limits of our natural rights to keep them out of conflict, you say natural rights are naturally limited to keep them out of conflict, correct?
Sounds a little like another po-tay-to po-tah-to problem, except for one thing.
How do we know the "natural limits" in society without laws? Do we, on a conflict by conflict basis, just reason out what is right based on whether some third person would feel threatened by what the second person did to the first? Who does this?
By at least one natural law philosopher, in a state of nature, the individual alone is the judge of whether his rights have been violated. In society, we ask judges to do it, but we give them laws to go by rather than relying solely on their powers of reason.
We need laws, not just right reason or "natural limits", to define the limits of our rights and keep them out of conflict. And sometimes, as I demonstrated, the law fails to adequately define those limits, opening the door to conflicts that can not be resolved simply by saying to one party "Nope, that's beyond the limits of your rights." When that happens, we must create new laws, defining new limits, to prevent or guide the resolution of similar conflicts in the future. |
