[KrisKrinkle]

Samuel Johnson’s dictionaries of the latter 1700’s and Noah Webster’s dictionary of 1828 pertinently define a right as a just claim. (”Just claim” could probably use further definition but I’m not going to do that now.) Webster goes on to write “Rights are natural, civil, political, religious, personal, and public.”

I cite these dictionaries as they are from the time of the Founders and I believe they most likely convey the understanding of the Founders.

[JGT]

The primary understanding of rights as “natural rights” do not come for contemporaneous dictionary definitions of the time. Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Mason, et al were heavily influenced by the work of John Locke and his “Second Treatise of Government” (1689): “...all individuals are equal in the sense that they are born with certain “inalienable” natural rights. That is, rights that are God-given and can never be taken or even given away. Among these fundamental natural rights, Locke said, are “life, liberty, and property.”