This philosophical and legal reflection, dated August 12, 1977, explores the ontological status of human and civil rights in relation to positive law. The central thesis posits that human rights fundamentally precede any form of legal regulation. Legal codes are not the source of these rights; rather, they serve as a formal mechanism for their public recognition and the establishment of principles for their protection. Notably, the author distances this claim from traditional natural law theories, which are characterized as philosophically unsustainable. Instead, the assertion that rights exist prior to legislation is presented as an essential invariant that remains valid across diverse ideological spectrums, including those that explicitly reject natural law principles. The text underscores that the legitimacy of rights does not derive from state-sanctioned constitution but from an inherent precedence that any legal system must ultimately respect. Consequently, rights are not constituted by the state but are pre-existing values that legal frameworks are duty-bound to recognize and safeguard within their structural principles.