At its most fundamental, a right is a claim, on other persons, that is acknowledged and reciprocated among the principals associated with that claim. The most basic of rights is a principle of interaction between people which amounts to the simplest version of the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you). In other words, it is a mutually beneficial agreement between two or more people; each of them agrees to behave in a certain way towards the others so that they will behave in the same way towards him/her.

Other than that, an entity (person or group) can make any sort of on other persons, but those claims remain simple assertions until the other persons acknowledge that claim as binding upon them. At that point, the claim becomes a privilege (a one-sided acknowledged claim). If all parties (including the originating claimant) also agree to reciprocate acknowledgement of such a claim, it becomes applicable to all, that is, applicable to everyone in the same sense and at the same time, and thus aright.

On that basis, additional structures (of social interaction) can be erected. It is not generally considered necessary that a right should be understood by the holder of that right, thus rights may be agreed on behalf of another, such as children's rights or the rights of people declared mentally incompetant to understand their rights. However, rights must be understood by somebody in order to have legal existence, so the understanding of rights is a social prerequisite for the existence of rights. Therefore, educational opportunities within society have a close bearing upon the people’s ability to erect adequate rights structures.

Form ( Lat. forma ), in general, refers to the external shape, appearance, configuration of an object, in contrast to the matter or content of which it is composed; thus a speech may contain excellent arguments ( the matter may be good),whereas the style, grammar, arrangement ( the form ) may be bad. “Form is supposed to cover the shape or structure of the work; content its substance, meaning, ideas, or expressive effects." (Middleton 1999, p.141) The term, with its adjective formal and the derived nouns formality and formalism, is hence sometimes contemptuously used for that which is superficial, unessential, and hypocritical: chap. xxiii. of Matthew's gospel is a classical instance of the distinction between the formalism of the Pharisaic code and genuine religion. With this may be compared the popular phrases good form and bad form applied to behavior in society: so format (from the French) is technically used of the shape and size, e.g. of a book (octavo, quarto, etc.) or of a cigarette.

The word form is also applied to certain definite objects: in printing a body of type secured in a chase for printing at one impression (form or forme); a bench without a back, such as is used in schools (perhaps to be compared with the French s'asseoir en forme, to sit in a row); a mould or shape on or in which an object is manufactured; the lair or nest of a hare. From its use in the sense of regulated order comes the application of the term to a class in a school( sixth form, fifth form, etc.); this sense has been explained without sufficient ground as due to the idea of all children in the same class sitting on a single form (bench).