Inalienable rights
Topic: Political Theory: Freedom and Rights · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 5 "Rights"
Meaning
Inalienable rights are rights that cannot be taken away. A person cannot give them up either, even by choice. The idea comes from the natural-rights tradition: people are born with these rights, and rulers do not grant them. Locke named life, liberty and property. Because the state does not give these rights, it cannot rightly take them away.
Example
The UDHR (1948) Preamble speaks of the "equal and inalienable rights" of all people. In India, the Supreme Court's Puttaswamy judgment (2017) treated life and personal liberty as part of being human, not as gifts of the Constitution. It also overruled ADM Jabalpur (1976), which had allowed these rights to be suspended.
Don't confuse with
- Legal rights: these are rights written into law, such as the Fundamental Rights. NCERT says legal recognition gives a right special status but is not its basis.
Related concepts
- Rights
- Natural law
- Natural rights
- Human rights
- Kant's idea of human dignity
- Moral conception of rights