  To take the Amistad as an example, we might give a conventional, partial view of rights as taking them to be supported by the sympathies of reasonable and empathetic onlookers. On that reading, Cinque and the other Africans who rose up and killed many of their captors had a right of self-defense, as well as a right to have their case heard in court, given the appalling circumstance of their kidnapping. Surely, any American would protest in just the same way if captured, and no one would think it too extreme to use whatever force was required to resist kidnapping. But a reading based on a natural view of rights, the sort Crummell is urging, would make much of the fact that the right to self-defense, especially by non-Americans in American waters, is one that attaches to persons, and not merely citizens, and so is a right that pre-exists rights granted by law. Indeed, it is the obligation of law to properly capture any such pre-existing rights from what a number of philosophers regard as our “natural state.” The decision might have turned out the same, but the reasoning would be different.