[mthreat]

Another point - people in prison still deserve "human rights", even though they've lost their right to freedom. This implies that even freedom isn't a human right. Of course, you could argue that this leads to a contradiction about taking away one's freedom, but that's another discussion.

[Riesling]

I studied law in germany for a couple of semesters and I learned that human rights are never absolute. They are more like bubbles. Basically your right ends where it collides with someones else right or to paraphrase it "one man's freedom is another man's limitation".

The purpose of the law is to make sure, that those bubbles are about equally sized for everyone.

[smsm42]

0 would be equal size for everyone, so I would hope the purpose of the law is more than that. I wouldn't also take Germany as particularly good example because, for example, free speech is not a right in Germany (they may claim they have very good reason for that, but don't they always do so?).

Rights are "not absolute" only is the sense that exercising your right does not absolve you from responsibility for violating other people's rights. So, if you exercise your right to freely use your property, say, a gun, and shoot somebody - you'll go to jail. But not for using your gun - but rather for violating other's right to live unshot by your gun. Your right to use your property didn't go anywhere, but it also didn't remove your responsibility for the consequences of such use. If there's no consequences, there's no place for government to intervene (I know most governments disagree, of course they do).

[saraid216]

The classic idiom (at least in America) is "Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zechariah_Chafee

[zcid]

Via the social contract, by infringing on the rights of another, one volunteers to temporarily suspend the right to freedom. A right cannot be taken away or lost as they are inherent to the human condition.

[noblethrasher]

Actually, a problem with Social Contract theory is that it can't deal with free-riders. If you never agreed to the contract then you can't be obligated to its terms. So you can infringe on the rights of people who did ascent to the terms of the contract without being obligated to submit to any punishment.

[saraid216]

First, a rights violation does not indicate the non-existence of a right.

Second, "freedom" is not a right and never has been. It is not a useful term on its own. You can be free to do something, or free from something, but you can't just be generically free.