Norms don’t matter if there’s no enforcement, no material cost for violating them. Why I am not a (trad) liberal: I fundamentally believe power matters more than rights. Rights framing is Ok, but itself is a unilateral disarmament by “holding these truths self-evident.” They aren’t.
Rights that need power to be exercised aren’t “rights,” they’re expressions of power. Too much of the left either collapses into naive anarchism over the contradictions of delegated power & social control, or falls into the totalitarian comfort of reciprocal authoritarianism & demonstrate unfitness.
Bentham was correct, rights are political creations. If we want to hold onto them we must force the politics that will defend them.
The only Bentham I’ve read is the utilitarian stuff
He discussed natural rights in Anarchical Fallicies and Pannomial Fragments
Norms aren't the goal, they're a tool we use to achieve the goal. The goal is a society that works well. Norms are an essential tool for this, but like all tools isn't the right tool for the job in 100% of cases. When norms make society worse, they're no longer the right tool for the job.