THE RIGHT TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY: INFLUENCE OF NATURAL RIGHTS ON QUEENSLAND LEGISLATION
THE RIGHT TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY: INFLUENCE OF NATURAL RIGHTS ON QUEENSLAND LEGISLATION M ELISSA B RUCE I.
INTRODUCTION
This essay will discuss the relationship between natural rights such as the right to life, liberty, and property, and law-given rights such as those contained in statute and tort law. Legal scenarios where they may appear inter-joined will be analysed followed by an evaluative discussion on the influence of natural rights on the process of making legislation in Queensland.
II.
NATURAL RIGHTS
The definition of natural rights has emerged over the years. In modern times, it has been stated that natural rights are inherent moral powers from within,1 authoritatively exercisable when an individual desires to claim something from another, or to claim immunity from coercion or harm from another.2 Reaching back in time, the idea of this natural right was evident in the setting up of a legal framework in the thirteenth century through which a poor individual in extreme need could enforce an inherent ‘right’ to the surplus wealth of another3 in order to sustain the necessities of life.4 In the same period of time, this idea of subjective natural rights may have been argued by St Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae, a work remaining unfinished at his death in 1274.5 Aquinas saw natural rights as being hierarchically more powerful than that stipulated within human enactments, ultimately remaining unchanged at its core by positive law.6 But a very strong voice in regards to natural rights arrived several hundred years later. Born in 1632, John Locke’s political thesis Two Treatises of Government laid out his interpretation of natural law.7 According to Locke, all men are born into a status of being perfectly free to determine their own actions and to deal with their property as they so wish, providing this freedom is exercised within his definition of natural law. Importantly, this freedom is to be exercised without any requirement to ask permission of, or submit to, the will Submitted for assessment LAW2224 1 Jean Porter, 'Justice, Equality, and Natural Rights Claims: A Reconsideration of Aquina's Conception of Right' (2015) 30(3) Journal of Law and Religion 446, 448, citing Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law and Church Law 1150–1625 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997) 43-56. 2 Porter (n 1) 448. 3 Porter (n 1) 450, citing Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law and Church Law 1150–1625 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997) 65-66. 4 Porter (n 1) 452. 5 Brian Davies, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae: A Guide and Commentary (Oxford University Press, Year) 7. 6 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, vols. 4–12 of the Opera Omnia iussa edita Leonis XIII (Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta S.C. de Propaganda Fide, 1888–1906), II-II 66.7, cited in Porter (n 1) 458-459. 7 Suri Ratnapala, Jurisprudence (Cambridge University Press, 3rd ed, 2017) 181.
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