The notion that Aristotle, in some sense, recognizes the rights of indi-
viduals is not new. Ernest Barker offered such an interpretation: 'The
life-breath of the State . . . is a justice which assures to each his rights,
enforces on all their duties, and so gives to each and all their own.' He
also sees this as a noteworthy departure from Plato: ' Plato thinks of the
individual as bound to do the duty to which he is called as an organ of
the State: Aristotle thinks of the individual as deserving the right which
he ought to enjoy in a society based on (proportionate) equality.' ¹ Further,
A. C. Bradley called attention to the parallel between the debate over
suffrage in nineteenth-century England and the discussion of constitu-
tional justice in Aristotle's Politics. Like Aristotle, the English used the
word 'right', as well as 'justice', in a double sense. Bradley distinguished
these senses as follows:

When we say that a man has a right to the franchise, what do we mean? We may
mean that according to the constitution, the English political dikaion, he can claim
it, because he satisfies the conditions laid down by the law as necessary to the
possession of it. But when the franchise is claimed as a right by those who do not
satisfy these conditions, this cannot be the meaning. They really affirm that the
actual law, the English dikaion, is not properly or absolutely just and does not
express 'natural right', that, according to real justice, they ought to have the
suffrage, and that, if they had it, the state would be less of a parekbasis [deviation]
and nearer to the ideal. ²

H. H. Joachim also saw a distinction between 'natural and legal right'
in the discussions of natural law and justice in Rhetoric, I, and Nicomachean
Ethics, V. He found there

rights which all men recognize as obtaining between man and man, no matter of
what special form of community they may be members: rights founded on the

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