long winded fool

But that is how human laws work. Human laws are not what is, they are what ought to be. Innocent humans have the inalienable right to life by law. Yes, this right can be taken away at any time. This right cannot be legally taken away so long as the law is inalienable and universal. And according to the U.N. it is. Any human who takes away any other human's inalienable right to life is subject to punishment by the people. This is why it is inalienable.

yguy

When we say that a person has an inalienable right to life, we mean that it may not be justly violated by other humans. Said right may be forfeited by the person if he denies others that right, but unborn children have no such power except when the pregnancy is a threat to the mother's life.

Dr. Retard

People don't seem to know what "inalienable" means, and this is a pet peeve of mine. It does not just mean "really hard-core". It means "unable to be voluntarily surrendered or transferred". You can't give up an inalienable right, even if you want to. You can give up other rights -- alienable rights.

For example, traditional common-sense says that my property right to this computer isn't inalienable. It is, rather, alienable. That means I can voluntarily transfer my property right to this computer to another person. This is what happens when I sell it to someone else, or give it to someone else. I can also simply surrender my right -- "OK, I don't want it anymore. Whoever wants it can have it!"

In contrast, traditional common-sense says that my right to life is inalienable. That means I cannot voluntarily transfer my right to life to anyone else. I cannot contract away my right to life, granting others the right to kill me, in exchange for money (or whatever). The right is mine, whether I want it or not. Rights to one's organs are similarly inalienable, according to traditional common-sense.

A focus on inalienable rights is important when dealing with Hobbes-style political theories, which say that rational people in a state of nature would transfer their pre-existing rights to the Sovereign, in exchange for political stability. For Hobbes, (almost?) every right is alienable. An anti-Hobbesian might counter that it is impossible for people to transfer their rights to the Sovereign, because people's rights are inalienable. And since these rights can be violated by the state, they impose strict limits to state power. Understanding this dispute is helpful in understanding why inalienable rights were important to the founders of the USA.

Loren Pechtel

Originally posted by Vylo
If anyone read my posts on the earlier thread I came to the conclusion that women should control their reproductive rights so long as they were responsible. If a birth control pill fails to do its job, that is no fault of the woman, she should not have the burden of the child.

In the case were approved contraceptives were neglected, the woman acted with negligence and must carry the child. She gives up her rights by failing to act responsibly.

In other words, the child is punishment. You sure must like child abuse to propose a system like that!

yguy

From dictionary.com:

inalienable
adj 1: incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another; "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights"

That means not that YOU may not repudiate or transfer that right, but that others may not. You are in fact capable of doing both, and people do it all the time. Murderers repudiate their right to life by murdering. People transfer other inalienable rights by enslaving themselves to others constantly in innumerable ways.

So you really think "inalienable rights" is properly used as a restriction on what the individual may do with his own rights? Seems inherently contradictory. You think Jefferson had that in mind when he used the phrase? How would that possibly make sense within the context of the document?

Dr. Retard

I think that's exactly what it means. If you want, I can Google "inalienable rights" and give you a lot of quotes and citations. If I had a legal dictionary at hand, I could just cite it.

Here's some notes from a lecture on Hobbes: (http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~ghh/319/Lecture07.html). This even uses an example I did: "Are there inalienable rights? I have a right to my bodily organs. Can I sell them to you?"

Here's a class writing assignment: (http://www.otterbein.edu/home/fac/AN...signments.html). It notes, "Inalienable rights are rights that can't be renounced or transferred by means of a voluntary act like contracting or promising. Examples: my property right to my pencil is alienable because I can give you that right just by declaring that it's yours. On the other hand, my legal right not to be killed by you is inalienable in the US--nothing I can do, not a contract, promise, anything, can make it legal for you to kill me."

Here's something from a book on legal theory and economics (by David Ellerman, who worked for the World Bank, among other things): "Often the phrase 'inalienable rights' is used simply to mean rights which are considered very important or fundamental. Such assertions are, by themselves, of little interest in an intellectual history of inalienable rights theory". He also says elsewhere, "In what follows, 'inalienable rights' will, unless otherwise indicated, always mean rights which may not be alienated even with the consent of the holder of the rights." ((http://cog.kent.edu/lib/Ellerman4/Chapter9.htm) and (http://cog.kent.edu/lib/Ellerman4/Chapter8.htm)).

An interesting thing you get from Ellerman's survey of inalienability is that traditional legal thinkers were mainly concerned with de facto inalienability rather than de jure inalienability. That is, with some rights, it is simply impossible for a rightsholder to transfer them (like freedom of thought) -- there's conceivable no way to pull it off, so they're de facto inalienable. The other variety of inalienability says, not that the transfer is impossible, but that it should be illegal; this like 'right to life'-contracts or slavery-contracts, which are possible but illegal (though Rousseau seems to argue that they're impossible, too!).

You also get the importance of inalienability in resisting Hobbesian arguments for state power, and how Jefferson took the distinction from Francis Hutcheson (hero to Hume and Smith), who applied it to "liberty of conscience" and the "right to private judgment".

As for "repudiate", it's here synonymous with "surrender", so I don't see what you were getting at. The whole point of inalienability is that the rightsholder cannot be separated from his/her right, no matter what. "[I]nherently contradictory"? I don't follow. They're un-take-away-able and also un-give-up-able. That's all.

Opera Nut

Anybody else been keeping up with "wrongful Life" or "wrongful birth" lawsuits recently???

I saw one on TV where a woman had an ultrasound and the doc didn't tell her the kid had spina bifida. Woman would have had chorionic villi sampling or genetic testing had she been offered that.

Child is born mentally retarded, unable to speak, unable to communicate, kid is on respirator, in wheel chair, paraplegic, all that stuff, and is taken care of by the parents 24/7 with no relief, and child's very expensive medical care is paid for by the taxpayers.

Now, would one of the right to life types step up to the plate, and adopt this child, and take care of ALL of its needs, medical and financial, so that the government won't have to do it, and the parents won't either???

The parents have sued the doctor and the hospital and won enough money to take care of the child for its life, and to afford some nurses and respite care so they won't go crazy taking care of this kid.

I am waiting for the staunch pro lifers to put their hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line to support these severely disabled children who have no hope of a meaningful life.


........tick tick tick...............

yguy

I don't see why not.

Patent nonsense, as the recognition of the concept of justifiable homicide clearly demonstrates.

I'm supposed to be impressed by that?

Again this is baloney. A murderer alienates himself from his right to life by taking it from others.

Actually, they are neither. They can be both stolen and surrendered - however, it is not right to do either. However, I may not properly aid or abet you in giving up your inherent rights. So what the affirmation that humans have inalienable rights really amounts to is an affirmation that other humans may not take away those rights without penalty.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by [you sensitive types skip the next two words] their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

This is a recognition that Government is necessary to prevent some from taking away the rights of others.

Dr. Retard

Because, IIRC, it's illegal. So, since it's illegal for you to give up this right, it's inalienable by law.

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Patent nonsense, as the recognition of the concept of justifiable homicide clearly demonstrates.

Sure, the quote was a little sloppy. The point is that there's no agreement you can make to give up your right to your life. Whereas you can give up your right to your computer, just by contract.

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I'm supposed to be impressed by that?

(i) I said that so that you knew I wasn't just quoting some random, uncredentialed schmoe. Not to impress you. Legal theorists do dictate what legal terms mean, after all.

(ii) Don't be a dickhead.

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Again this is baloney. A murderer alienates himself from his right to life by taking it from others.

Not in some states. In any case, this is entirely beside the point when it comes to alienable/inalienable rights, as they concern things like contracts and permission, and not "you brought it upon yourself" aggression.

Quote:

Actually, they are neither. They can be both stolen and surrendered - however, it is not right to do either. However, I may not properly aid or abet you in giving up your inherent rights. So what the affirmation that humans have inalienable rights really amounts to is an affirmation that other humans may not take away those rights without penalty.

If it's not right to do so -- if it ought to be illegal to do so -- then they're inalienable (in the evaluative sense). My "cannot" was intentionally ambiguous between de facto and de jure uses, since both uses are important, and "cannot" can refer to both impossibility and impermissibility.

Inalienable rights do not merely concern what others may take away without penalty. They also concern what others may give up without penalty.

Come on, this discussion is over the meaning of a piece of jargon in legal and political theory. This isn't really debatable. I haven't seen any evidence on your side for your "only what people may take away" conception. I don't expect to see any evidence, because that's not what the word means. You don't know what "inalienable" means. Just admit it. There's no shame in being wrong here.

yguy

That doesn't tell me why is not an inalienable right.

What does that have to do with the subject of the thread?

Again, legality is no sure indicator of whether a right has been forfeited. Because a state chooses not to excercise its right to execute criminals doesn't mean it lacks that right, since it can justly re-empower itself in that respect at the stroke of a pen...which is what SCOTUS did in RvW, but not justly, since no fetus can forfeit its right to life as murderers do.

It's utterly beside the point. You've managed to sidetrack the discussion by quibbling over semantics. It doesn't matter what the technical definition of "inalienable" is, it matters that human beings have the inherent right to life. The ability to sign away any such right is obviously irrelevant in the case of a fetus which, if it were capable of speaking on its own behalf, would presumably not agree to being ripped to pieces and dumped into a sewer.