RIGHT

As a noun, and taken In an abstract sense, the term means justice, ethical correctness, or consonance with the rules of law or the principles of morals. In this signification it answers to one meaning of the Latin “jus,” and serves to indicate law in the abstract, considered as the foundation of all rights, or the complex of underlying moral principles which impart the character of justice to all positive law, or give it an ethical content. As a noun, and taken in a concrete sense, a right signifies a power, privilege, faculty, or demand, inherent in one person and incident upon another. “Rights” are defined generally as “powers of free action.” And the primal rights pertaining to men are undoubtedly enjoyed by human beings purely as such, being grounded in personality, and existing antecedently to their recognition by positive law. But leaving the abstract moral sphere, and giving to the term a juristic content, a “right” is well defined as “a capacity residing in one man of controlling, with the assent and assistance of the state, the actions of others.” HolL Jur. 69. The noun substantive “a right” signifies that which jurists denominate a “faculty;” that which resides in a determinate person, by virtue of a given law, and which avails against a person (or answers to a duty lying on a person) other than the person in whom it resides. And the noun substantive “rights” is the plural of the noun substantive “a right.” But the expression “right,” when it is used as an adjective, is equivalent to the adjective “just,” as the adverb “rightly” is equivalent to the adverb “justly.” And, when used as the abstract name corresponding to the adjective “right,” the noun substantive “right” is synonymous with the noun substantive “justice.” Aust. Jur.