Thinking about the subject of "natural rights" and the way justice is suppose to work, it's sort of trying to understand a misnomer; no such thing as rights exist in and of itself, however, when somebody says the right to life is a natural right, they are just observing the reciprocal regularity and patterns seen in nature when individuals interact with one another. These observations then become natural law and part of the vernacular, only being modified when their conditions can't hold up any longer.
Economic laws work the same way, there's the law of demand, marginal utility, diminishing returns, Gresham's law, among others which have been distinguished. Also, the physical laws of the universe can only be accounted for when you see how phenomenon reacts in some shape or form. To me everything really seems to be based off principles, the profound metaphysical analysis may be uncertain in regards to the actual final cause or reason of the thing. Only by taking an disinterested and objective account of things as they are, can you actually be aware of how things work and their general fundamentals.
One may want to go to the classics, and refer back to Paine, Jefferson, or Locke, who really took these ideas of understanding justice and each mans relation to it seriously. The prevailing thread among these common-sense minded Anglo thinkers was seeing that the only absolute is the individual; there was to be no society or any conception of justice without first establishing individual rights as the principle. Across antiquity you also find early understandings of this notion in many Eastern philosophies as well from Cyrenaics and Epicureans in the West.
Anyone that attempts to subdue mans inherent self-interest is in fact revolting against an observable thing in nature. As Bastiat says, "laws are created because laws already exist", man takes what he sees in everyday living, and creates protections for person, liberty, and property. Even the one who wants power over others often realizes he's denying this right for others, yet for himself he wants to make sure his right is protected so he can continue his schemes.
