  This is the driving force of his positive solution to the Problem of Civil Rights—call it the Natural Rights Argument—which begins by asserting that rights exist, and not merely in the conventional or partial sense of public sympathy. They have a “higher origin” and a “purer birth,” as much in the sense of logical priority as in the sense of metaphysical independence. That is, Crummell takes the Problem of Civil Rights to require for its solution an appeal to rights as existing prior to and independent of the legal environment in which such rights are contested and adjudicated.