Treasury of the United States
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77 Corpus Juris Secundum (1952) RIGHTThe word “right,” or in its plural form “rights,” a common term, of broad signification. It is a generic, abstract, and comprehensive term, having a wide scope of meaning in its various legal applications, and it has no satisfactory definition or explanation except in connection with some concrete conception of the thing out of which it grows. It may mean any legal right as the word is normally used, or it may be limited to some specific one of the large class of recognized “rights”. It may be a right to do something, to have something, to be something, or even to be let alone, it may refer to a right or privilege to use a highway or other public facility, or to utilize one of the great institutions of nature, or, on the other hand, it may refer to personal liberty, security, health, or property. A right is a relation of a person or persons to some thing or person, and the term is frequently used to denote faculty, prerogative, or privilege, or to designate power, prerogative, and privilege, especially when applied to corporations. The term also is often employed to signify possession, and even ownership, of property to which one is entitled, and, in law, is most frequently applied to property in its restricted sense. The word “rights,” as applied to property, refers to the right to the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of it, and means the possession of the full and complete title, and of all remedies relating thereto. The use of the word in connection with any specific property ordinarily connotes claim or title thereto, since it is broad enough to embrace whatever may be lawfully claimed. That which is directed by law for one’s protection and advantage is said to be one’s right, and a right, in a legal sense, exists when, in consequence of given facts, the law declares that one person is entitled to enforce against another a claim, or to resist the enforcement of a claim urged by another. The noun “right” is variously defined as meaning a claim, a well-founded claim, a well-founded or acknowledged claim, a just claim, a legal claim; that which one has a legal or social claim to do or to exact, that which a man is entitled to have, or to do, or to receive from others, within the limits prescribed by law, that which one person ought to have or receive from another, it being withheld from him, or not in his possession that which justly belongs to one, something with which the law invests one person and with respect to which, for his benefit, another, or perhaps all others, are required by the law to do or perform acts or to forbear or abstain from acts. It is also defined as meaning power, legal power, authority, privilege, prerogative; immunity, a power or privilege to which one is entitled on principles of morality, religion, law, or the like, a capacity or privilege, the enjoyment of which is secured to a person by law. “Right” is further defined as meaning interest; concern, title, property, ownership, advantage; benefit. A “right” is also said to be the legal consequence which attaches or applies to certain facts. The word has various other meanings, and as a noun it may signify the right hand or side, as a verb it may mean to alter or change (something wrong) so as to make (it) right, and as an adjective it may mean properly according with the conditions of the case, fit, suitable, becoming. |
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