ABSTRACT
This chapter looks not so much at the content and scope of particular rights but rather at broad issues of content and scope. It focuses on one broad issue, namely, negative and positive rights. A second broad issue here is that of legal versus moral rights. One of the most cited and influential rights documents ever written is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), ratified by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 1948. Usually, in fact, rights theorists speak of first-generation and second-generation rights. First-generation rights sometimes called "political rights", are essentially negative rights. While first-generation rights are negative rights focused on political liberty, second-generation rights, often spoken of as economic and social rights, are positive rights. The main reason for discussing security rights, which are not very controversial, was to make explicit the basic assumptions that support the usual judgment that security rights are basic rights.
