A prima facie right is a
right
Rights are law, legal, social, or ethics, ethical principles of Liberty, freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convent ...
that can be outweighed by other considerations. It stands in contrast with absolute rights, which cannot be outweighed by anything. Some authors consider an absolute right as a prima facie right, but one that cannot be outweighed in any possible situation. It is also maintained that all men always have a prima facie rights to liberty, security, and life but they do not constitute actual rights if there are stronger prima facie rights or moral considerations that
supervene
In philosophy, supervenience refers to a relation between sets of properties or sets of facts. X is said to supervene on Y if and only if some difference in Y is necessary for any difference in X to be possible. Some examples include:
* Whether t ...
. An act may also be viewed as prima facie right but viewed in others as prima facie wrong.
See also
*
Natural and legal rights
Some philosophers distinguish two types of rights, natural rights and legal rights.
* Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government, and so are ''universal'', ''fundamental right ...
*
Political ethics
Political ethics (also known as political morality or public ethics) is the practice of making moral judgments about political action and political agents. It covers two areas. The first is the ethics of process (or the ethics of office), which de ...
* ''
Prima facie
''Prima facie'' (; ) is a Latin expression meaning ''at first sight'' or ''based on first impression''. The literal translation would be 'at first face' or 'at first appearance', from the feminine forms of ''primus'' ('first') and ''facies'' (' ...
''
*
Proportionalism
Proportionalism is an ethical theory that lies between consequential theories and deontological theories.Note that there is a substantial difference between teleology, as it is understood in the Thomistic context, and consequentialism. See Conse ...
*
Situational ethics
Situational ethics or situation ethics takes into account ''only'' the particular context of an act when evaluating it ethically, rather than judging it only according to absolute moral standards. With the intent to have a fair basis for judgment ...
References
*http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405106795_chunk_g978140510679519_ss1-125 Retrieved 25 May 2009
*http://www.onlineethics.org/cms/13822.aspx] ''Ethics Online'' Retrieved 25 May 2009
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Rights