If this
had always been borne steadily in mind, the question would hardly
have been asked.
[214] A legal right is nothing but a permission to exercise
certain natural powers, and upon certain conditions to obtain
protection, restitution, or compensation by the aid of the public
force. Just so far as the aid of the public force is given a man,
he has a legal right, and this right is the same whether his
claim is founded in righteousness or iniquity. Just so far as
possession is protected, it is as much a source of legal rights
as ownership is when it secures the same protection.
Every right is a consequence attached by the law to one or more
facts which the law defines, and wherever the law gives any one
special rights not shared by the body of the people, it does so
on the ground that certain special facts, not true of the rest of
the world, are true of him. When a group of facts thus singled
out by the law exists in the case of a given person, he is said
to be entitled to the corresponding rights; meaning, thereby,
that the law helps him to constrain his neighbors, or some of
them, in a way in which it would not, if all the facts in
question were not true of him. Hence, any word which denotes such
a group of facts connotes the rights attached to it by way of
legal consequences, and any word which denotes the rights
attached to a group of facts connotes the group of facts in like
manner.
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