Negative rights are the rights we enjoy because government is restricted from forbidding or hindering personal activity. Positive rights are “rights” that are secured when government intervenes in citizens’ lives to give them resources or to otherwise enable them to do or to have certain things. Generally speaking, America’s Founders and early leaders enthusiastically upheld the former and rarely upheld the latter (the right to a trial by jury being one such instance). Accordingly, the Founders drafted and ratified the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution, which secured foundational rights of citizens through government limitations.
A PDF file of this graphic is available here.
Top image: The Bill of Rights, a list of rights enjoyed by the people of the United States, as well as a list of limitations on the government. These are negative rights.
You can watch and listen to brief yet excellent presentation on positive and negative rights here.
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