Civil rights

Civil rights are the protections and privileges of personal liberty given to all citizens by law. Civil rights are distinguished from "human rights" or "natural rights"; civil rights are rights that persons do have, while natural or human rights are rights that many scholars think that people should have. For example, the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) argued that the natural rights of life, liberty, and property should be converted into civil rights and protected by the state as an aspect of the social contract. Others have argued that people acquire rights as an inalieanble rights gift from God or at a time of nature before governments were formed.

Related Topics:
Human rights - Natural rights - John Locke - Life - Liberty - Property - Social contract - Inalieanble rights - Nature

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Laws guaranteeing civil rights may be written, derived from custom, or implied. In the United States and most continental European counties, civil rights laws are most often written. In the U.S., for example, laws protecting civil rights appear in the Constitution, in the amendments to the Constitution (particulary the 13th and 14th Amendments), in federal statues, in state constitutions and statues, and even in the ordinances of counties and cities. In the United Kingdom, on the other hand, such rights are frequently granted by custom and are not memorialized in a written law. "Implied" rights are rights that a court may find to exist even though not expressly guaranteed by written law or custom, on the theory that a written or customary right must necessarily include the implied right. One famous (and controversial) example of a right implied from the U.S. Constitution is the "right to privacy", which the U.S. Supreme Court found to exist in the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade; the Court then found that state legislation prohibiting or limiting abortion violated this right to privacy.

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States and local governments can expand civil rights beyond the U.S. Constitution, but they cannot diminish Constitutional rights. For example, some American cities make it illegal to discriminate against persons on the basis of their sexual orientation, thus expanding the civil rights of homosexuals; however, cities which create school districts in such a way that the districts discriminate against students on the basis of their race will have injunctions entered against them by the federal courts. States frequently grant civil rights in excess of federal law, such as Article 21 of the Maryland Constitution, which requires that a jury be unanimous in order to convict a person of a crime.

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Examples of civil rights and liberties include the right to get redress if injured by another, the right to privacy, the right of peaceful protest, the right to a fair investigation and trial if suspected of a crime, and more generally-based constitutional rights such as the right to vote, the right to personal freedom, the right to life, the right to freedom of movement and anti-discrimination laws. As civilisations emerged and formalised through written constitutions, some of the more important civil rights were granted to citizens. When those grants were later found inadequate, civil rights movements emerged as the vehicle for claiming more equal protection for all citizens and advocating new laws to limit the effect of current discriminations.

Related Topics:
Right to vote - Right to life - Discrimination - Constitution - Equal protection

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Civil rights can in one sense refer to the equal treatment of all citizens irrespective of race, sex, or other class, or it can refer to laws which invoke claims of positive liberty. An example of the former would be the decision in Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S. 483 (1954) which was concerned with the constitutionality of laws which imposed segregation in the education systems of some U.S states. The theories set out below explain why such laws should not be considered legitimate, but do not explain why the case failed to declare the general principle that all manifestations of segregation were a breach of civil rights (that would be more properly a question of politics). The U.S. legislature subsequently addressed the issue through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Sec. 201. which states: (a) All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin. Some other countries have enacted similar legislation, or have given direct effect to supranational agrements such as the European Convention on Human Rights (with forty-five countries as signatories), which encompass both human rights and civil liberties.

Related Topics:
Positive liberty - Brown v. Board of Education - Civil Rights Act of 1964 - European Convention on Human Rights

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