Rights are entitlements or permissions, usually of a legal or moral nature. Rights are of vital importance in the fields of law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology.

Theoretical distinctions

There are numerous different theoretical distinctions in accordance with which rights may be classified. Not all sources support both sides of every distinction listed here, e.g. Jeremy Bentham denied the existence of natural rights, holding all rights to be of a legal character, and Ayn Rand denied the existence of group rights, holding all rights to be of an individual character.

• Natural rights and legal rights - There exists debate over the source of what many consider basic rights, such as the right to freedom of speech. On the one hand, these basic rights may be considered of a purely moral or ethical character, i.e., the idea of natural rights, which holds that certain rights derive from nature and cannot be modified by legislative authority. On the other hand, these basic rights may be considered to be of a purely posited nature, i.e., the idea of legal rights, which are arbitrary human constructs, created by legislative authority and subject to change. Other rights, such as that to access a lawyer or an abortion, avoid the question of this dichotomy by finding their validity pursuant to other, more basic rights, such as the right to due process in the case of the former, and the right to privacy in the later.
• Explicit rights and unenumerated rights - Explicit rights are those legal rights specifically granted by a governing body. Unenumerated rights are those legal rights that are not explicitly granted by the governing body. Considerable discussion and disagreement has occurred over unenumerated rights (what these rights include, what types of rights they are, and others).Fact: date=December 2008
• Claim rights and liberty rights - A liberty right grants permission, e.g. freedom of speech, whereas a claim right grants an entitlement, e.g. the right to life. Claim rights and liberty rights might be thought of as necessarily imposing constraints or obligations on the other. On the one hand, claim rights restrict other agents' liberty rights to affect the object of the claim. For instance, a claim right to a trial by jury constrains a ruler's liberty right to unilaterally jail whomever he sees fit. On the other hand, a liberty right constrains (but does not totally preclude) the exercise of claim rights on all necessary conditions for the exercise of that liberty. Examples of this are difficult to establish because of the difficulty of establishing necessary conditions for exercising a particular liberty right. One possible modern example might be a liberty right to freedom of movement, which restricts the claim rights one might exercise over the roads (as a necessary condition for freedom of movement). It should also be noted that liberty rights, as permissions, are also known simply as liberties, but are still frequently referred to as rights (e.g. "I have a right to do x" often means "I am permitted to do x"), though some deny that such usage is proper.
• Negative rights and positive rights - Negative rights require inaction from others (in the sense of rights as claims or entitlements), or permit inaction from the right bearer (in the sense of rights as liberties or permissions). Conversely, positive rights require action from others (in the sense of rights as claims or entitlements) or permit action from the right bearer (in the sense of rights as liberties or permissions).
• Individual rights and group rights - Individual rights are rights pertaining to individuals, regardless of their membership within a group. Group rights, in contrast are held by an ensemble of people collectively, or by the members of a group of people who have a certain characteristic in common. In some cases there can be tension between individual and group rights. A classic instance in which group and individual rights clash is conflicts between unions and their members. For example, members of a union may wish to contract with the employer for a wage other than that negotiated by the union, but are unable to due to the union's control of the work sphere, sometimes referred to as a "closed shop."
• Absolute rights and conditional rights - Absolute rights are those rights applied without contingencies. Conditional rights are granted only after meeting certain requirements. The ability to carry weapons might be a conditional right; the right to subsistence provisions might be an absolute right.Fact: date=March 2009