This is Philosophy Bites with me Nigel Warburton and me David Edmonds.

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Talk of human rights is commonplace in politics and the law. We're often told we have the right to free speech, the right to a fair trial, the right to be housed.

But what is the nature of these rights? Some rights are enshrined in law, but our rights ultimately grounded

in morality. John Tassulis is at University College London.

John Tassulis, welcome to Philosophy Bites. Thanks for inviting me.

The topic we're going to focus on is human rights.

I wonder if you could begin by giving us some examples of plausible human rights.

Well, plausibility might be in the eye of the beholder, but perhaps the paradigmatic human

right is the right not to be tortured.

But then also there are other rights that have acquired a lot of plausibility, least since the Second World War right to health for example, the right to work, rights to political participation.

From a philosophical point of view these are quite tricky ideas because there are obviously legal rights which are fairly clearly written in agreements between people.

But some philosophers talk as if... in agreements between people,

but some philosophers talk as if rights exist as things like chairs in the universe

that you can go out there and discover.

It's not clear to me how clear these legal rights are.

Often they're presented in very sketchy, vague formulations.

I would say that in fact, it's often the presupposition

that we have an independent handle on these rights

independently of their formulation in law and that often judges and lawyers are

...