What are natural rights?
Answer
Rights that all people have by being human, not granted by government
Explanation
Natural rights are the rights that, in the philosophical tradition adopted by the American Founders, all people possess simply because they are human, prior to and independent of any government grant. The concept was developed most influentially by John Locke in the Second Treatise of Government in 1689. Locke argued that in a state of nature, before government existed, people held inherent rights to life, liberty, and property. Government, in his account, was instituted by consent specifically to secure these pre-existing rights, and its legitimacy depended on continuing to do so.
Thomas Jefferson translated this framework into the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, asserting that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Jefferson substituted pursuit of happiness for property in part to broaden the goal beyond material possessions and in part because the term reflected the moral and intellectual flourishing championed by classical and Christian traditions.
Natural rights are described as unalienable, meaning they cannot be transferred or surrendered, even by the person who holds them. They are inherent rather than granted. Government does not create them; government's job is to recognize and protect them. The Bill of Rights and later constitutional amendments enumerate specific protections that flow from this view, but the Ninth Amendment, ratified in 1791, makes explicit that the listing of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The natural rights framework has limits. The Founders themselves did not extend full rights to enslaved people, women, or Native Americans, although the principles they articulated would later be invoked by abolitionists, suffragists, and civil rights leaders to demand inclusion. Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Martin Luther King Jr. all argued that the country was failing to live up to its own founding commitments.
Modern constitutional theory often relies less on natural law than on positive constitutional text, but natural rights language remains a common framework for moral argument about human rights, both in American politics and in international human rights law since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Why this matters for your test
Understanding natural rights explains why Americans speak of rights as something government cannot legitimately take away, even by majority vote. The framework grounds American constitutional protections in moral claims about human dignity, not just political agreement, and it gives ongoing power to arguments for expanding rights to people previously excluded.
Source: USCIS 128 Civics Questions (2025)
