Common Rights

Description 1

common rights = natural rights common to each individual

differ from

collective rights = those that have been delegated to the community or its government

Source: http://geolib.com/sullivan.dan/commonrights.html

Description 2

Massimo De Angelis:

"It is because this organic relation between the activity of the commoners and the commons that “commons” rights differ, in their constitution, from legal rights such as “human”, “political” or “social” rights. In the latter sense, a “right” is a legal entitlement to have or obtain something or to act in a certain way. A title deed constitutes evidence of such a right.

For the medieval English commoners instead,

- common rights are embedded in a particular ecology with its local husbandry. . . . Commoners first think not of title deeds, but human deeds: how will this land be tilled? Does it require manuring? What grows there? They begin to explore. One might call it a natural attitude. Second, commoning is embedded in a labor process; it inheres in a particular praxis of field, upland, forest, marsh, coast. Common rights are entered into by labor. Third, commoning is collective. Fourth, commoning, being independent of the state, is independent also of the temporality of the law and state. It goes deep into human history" (Linabough 2008: 44-45). (http://www.taller-commons.com/downloads/angelis.pdf)