# Do human rights exist beyond the law?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-human-rights-exist-beyond-the-law/454375>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [June 26, 2008, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-human-rights-exist-beyond-the-law/454375 "2008-06-26T23:54:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-human-rights-exist-beyond-the-law/454375/41 "2008-07-02T05:21:09Z")

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[QUOTE=Muffin]  
That opens the door wide to any number of abuses…  
[/QUOTE]  
Truth often does.

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**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-human-rights-exist-beyond-the-law/454375/42 "2008-07-02T10:24:46Z")

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**JThunder** , you haven’t actually shown natural law exists. Your examples of raping babies, and the Holocaust, are already handled by frameworks that don’t need to assert the existence of natural laws, or other such pseudo-religious woo-woo.

I ask again, how do you differentiate between “rights” that are natural, and those that are not? Is the right to own property a natural law, or is it not? If you can’t even recognise them, then, again, how can you reasonably state that natural laws exist? Further, where do natural laws come from, and why? What point in our evolutionary time line did natural laws appear? Are animals subject to natural laws? etc.

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