According to Sir Henry Maine, “a clear and consistent meaning was for the first time given to the expression ‘a right’ by the searching analysis of Bentham and Austin.” There is no question at least that clear thinking respecting the concept of ‘a right’ has been — and still is — closely associated with the work of legal philosophers, in particular, legal philosophers working in the positivistic tradition of Bentham and Austin. In Bentham’s case, clarity and consistency of thought respecting rights are purchased by confining attention to the legal arena. In truth, Bentham writes, “there are no such things as natural rights — no such things as rights anterior to the establishment of government — no such things as natural rights opposed to, in contradistinction to, legal [rights].” In short, all rights are artificial, products of human action. Consequently, that a certain “point of conduct” is a right does not turn on whether that point of conduct passes a moral test. It is neither necessary nor sufficient for the truth of such a claim of right that the conduct in question is right conduct. To think otherwise is to confuse questions of existence with questions of merit. One may have a right, say, to burn the flag of the United States in a peaceful political protest even though, in terms of widely accepted criteria of right conduct, say, of conservative Americans, this is wrong. So it has become a commonplace among contemporary rights theorists that there is a distinction between ‘a right’ (moral or legal) and ‘the right thing to do’ (morally or legally), unless a point were being pressed with respect to natural rights.