The right to vote or hold office, for example, are not natural or human rights. Indeed, many such institutions, norms, and rights, which today we consider essential to civil justice, are merely checks on abuse and would be unnecessary if abuses were absent. Thus, they are positive rights, not strictly natural, and are a particularity of a people—an inheritance from ancestors—not things owed by “inviolable dignity.” It follows that the more righteous the community, the fewer required egalitarian institutions.
