Civil and political rights are a class of
rights that protect
individuals'
freedom from infringement by
government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government i ...
s,
social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of society and the
state without
discrimination or
repression.
Civil rights include the ensuring of peoples' physical and mental integrity,
life, and
safety; protection from discrimination on grounds such as
sex,
race,
sexual orientation,
national origin,
color,
age,
political affiliation
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or pol ...
,
ethnicity,
social class,
religion, and
disability; and
individual rights such as
privacy and the freedom of
thought,
speech,
religion,
press,
assembly, and
movement.
Political rights include
natural justice
In English law, natural justice is technical terminology for the rule against bias (''nemo iudex in causa sua'') and the right to a fair hearing ('' audi alteram partem''). While the term ''natural justice'' is often retained as a general c ...
(procedural fairness) in
law, such as the
rights of the accused, including the
right to a fair trial;
due process; the right to seek redress or a
legal remedy; and rights of
participation in
civil society and
politics such as
freedom of association, the
right to assemble, the
right to petition
The right to petition government for redress of grievances is the right to make a complaint to, or seek the assistance of, one's government, without fear of punishment or reprisals.
In Europe, Article 44 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of ...
, the
right of self-defense, and the
right to vote.
Civil and political rights form the original and main part of international
human rights. They comprise the first portion of the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (with
economic, social, and cultural rights
Economic, social and cultural rights, (ESCR) are socio-economic human rights, such as the right to education, right to housing, right to an adequate standard of living, right to health, victims' rights and the right to science and culture. Econ ...
comprising the second portion). The theory of
three generations of human rights considers this group of rights to be "first-generation rights", and the theory of
negative and positive rights considers them to be generally
negative rights.
History
The phrase "civil rights" is a translation of Latin ''jus civis'' (right of the citizen). Roman citizens could be either free (''libertas'') or servile (''servitus''), but they all had rights in law. After the
Edict of Milan in 313, these rights included the freedom of religion; however, in 380, the
Edict of Thessalonica required all subjects of the Roman Empire to profess Catholic Christianity.
[Fahlbusch, Erwin and Geoffrey William Bromiley, ''The encyclopedia of Christianity'', Volume 4, p. 703.] Roman legal doctrine was lost during the Middle Ages, but claims of universal rights could still be made based on Christian doctrine. According to the leaders of
Kett's Rebellion (1549), "all bond men may be made free, for God made all free with his precious blood-shedding."
In the 17th century,
English common law judge Sir
Edward Coke revived the idea of rights based on citizenship by arguing that Englishmen had historically enjoyed
such rights. The
Parliament of England adopted the
English Bill of Rights in 1689. It was one of the influences drawn on by
George Mason and
James Madison when drafting the
Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776. The Virginia declaration is the direct ancestor and model for the
U.S. Bill of Rights (1789).
The removal by legislation of a civil right constitutes a "civil disability". In early 19th century Britain, the phrase "civil rights" most commonly referred to the issue of such legal discrimination against Catholics. In the
House of Commons support for civil rights was divided, with many politicians agreeing with the existing civil disabilities of Catholics. The
Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 restored their civil rights.
In the United States, the term civil rights has been associated with the
civil rights movement (1954-1968), which fought against racism.
Protection of rights
T. H. Marshall
Thomas Humphrey Marshall (1893–1981) was an English sociologist who is best known for his essay " Citizenship and Social Class," a key work on citizenship that introduced the idea that full citizenship includes civil, political, and social ci ...
notes that civil rights were among the first to be recognized and codified, followed later by political rights and still later by social rights. In many countries, they are
constitutional right
A constitutional right can be a prerogative or a duty, a power or a restraint of power, recognized and established by a sovereign state or union of states. Constitutional rights may be expressly stipulated in a national constitution, or they may ...
s and are included in a
bill of rights or similar document. They are also defined in
international human rights instruments, such as the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Civil and political rights need not be codified to be protected. However, most
democracies worldwide do have formal written guarantees of civil and political rights. Civil rights are considered to be
natural rights.
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...
wrote in his ''
A Summary View of the Rights of British America
''A Summary View of the Rights of British America'' was a tract written by Thomas Jefferson in 1774, before the U.S. Declaration of Independence, in which he laid out for delegates to the First Continental Congress a set of grievances against Kin ...
'' that "a free people
laim
Laim (Central Bavarian: ''Loam'') is a district of Munich, Germany, forming the 25th borough of the city. Inhabitants: c. 49.000 (2005)
History
Originally its own independent locality, Laim was in existence before Munich. It was first documente ...
their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their
chief magistrate."
The question of to whom civil and political rights apply is a subject of controversy. Although in many countries
citizens have greater protections against infringement of rights than non-citizens, civil and political rights are generally considered to be universal rights that apply to all
persons.
According to political scientist Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr., analyzing the causes of and lack of protection from human rights abuses in the Global South should be focusing on the interactions of domestic and international factors—an important perspective that has usually been systematically neglected in the social science literature.
Other rights
Custom also plays a role. Implied or
unenumerated rights are rights that
courts may find to exist even though not expressly guaranteed by written law or custom; one example is the
right to privacy in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
, and the
Ninth Amendment explicitly shows that there are other rights that are also protected.
The
United States Declaration of Independence states that people have unalienable rights including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". It is considered by some that the sole purpose of government is the protection of life, liberty and property.
Some thinkers have argued that the concepts of
self-ownership and
cognitive liberty affirm rights to choose the food one eats, the
medicine one takes, and the
habit one indulges.
Social movements for civil rights
Civil rights guarantee equal protection under the law. When civil and political rights are not guaranteed to all as part of equal protection of
laws, or when such guarantees exist on paper but are not respected in practice, opposition, legal action and even
social unrest may ensue.
Civil rights movements in the United States gathered steam by 1848 with such documents as the Declaration of Sentiment. Consciously modeled after the
Declaration of Independence, the
Declaration of Rights and Sentiments
The Declaration of Sentiments, also known as the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, is a document signed in 1848 by 68 women and 32 men—100 out of some 300 attendees at the first women's rights convention to be organized by women. Held in Sen ...
became the founding document of the American women's movement, and it was adopted at the Seneca Falls Convention, July 19 and 20, 1848.
Worldwide, several
political movements for
equality before the law occurred between approximately 1950 and 1980. These movements had a legal and constitutional aspect, and resulted in much law-making at both national and international levels. They also had an activist side, particularly in situations where violations of rights were widespread. Movements with the proclaimed aim of securing observance of civil and political rights included:
* the
civil rights movement in the United States, where rights of black citizens had been violated;
* the
, formed in 1967 following failures in this province of the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
to respect the Roman Catholic minority's rights; and
* movements in many Communist countries, such as the
Prague Spring and
Charter 77 in
Czechoslovakia and the uprisings in Hungary.
Most civil rights movements relied on the technique of
civil resistance, using
nonviolent methods to achieve their aims. In some countries, struggles for civil rights were accompanied, or followed, by
civil unrest and even armed rebellion. While civil rights movements over the last sixty years have resulted in an extension of civil and political rights, the process was long and tenuous in many countries, and many of these movements did not achieve or fully achieve their objectives.
Problems and analysis
Questions about civil and political rights have frequently emerged. For example, to what extent should the government intervene to protect individuals from infringement on their rights by other
individuals, or from
corporation
A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and ...
s—e.g., in what way should
employment discrimination in the
private sector be dealt with?
Political theory deals with civil and political rights.
Robert Nozick and
John Rawls expressed competing visions in Nozick's ''
Anarchy, State, and Utopia'' and Rawls' ''
A Theory of Justice''. Other influential authors in the area include
Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, and
Jean Edward Smith.
First-generation rights
First-generation rights, often called "blue" rights, deal essentially with liberty and participation in political life. They are fundamentally civil and political in nature, as well as strongly
individualistic: They serve
negatively to protect the individual from excesses of the state. First-generation rights include, among other things,
freedom of speech, the
right to a fair trial, (in some countries) the
right to keep and bear arms,
freedom of religion,
freedom from discrimination, and
voting rights. They were pioneered in the seventeenth and eighteenth-century during the
Age of Enlightenment. Political theories associated with the English, American, and French revolutions were codified in the
English Bill of Rights in 1689 (a restatement of
Rights of Englishmen, some dating back to
Magna Carta in 1215) and more fully in the French
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (french: Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen de 1789, links=no), set by France's National Constituent Assembly in 1789, is a human civil rights document from the French Revol ...
in 1789 and the
United States Bill of Rights in 1791.
They were enshrined at the global level and given status in
international law first by Articles 3 to 21 of the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and later in the 1966
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In Europe, they were enshrined in the
European Convention on Human Rights in 1953.
Civil and political rights organizations
.
There are current organizations that exist to protect people's civil and political rights in case they are infringed upon. The ACLU, founded in 1920, is a well-known non-profit organization that helps to preserve freedom of speech and works to change policy. Another organization is the NAACP, founded in 1909, which focuses on protecting the civil rights of minorities. The NRA is a civil rights group founded in 1871 that primarily focuses on protecting the right to bear arms. These organizations serve a variety of causes one being the AFL-CIO, which is America's union that represent the working-class people nationwide.
See also
References
External links
Abbott, Lewis F. Defending Liberty: The Case for a New Bill of Rights. (2019). ISR/Google Books.*
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle~ an online multimedia encyclopedia presented by the King Institute at Stanford University, includes information on over 1000 civil rights movement figures, events and organizations
Encyclopædia Britannica: Article on Civil Rights MovementThe History Channel: Civil Rights MovementCivil Rights: Beyond Black & White– slideshow by ''
Life magazine''
Civil rights during the Eisenhower Administration, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
{{Authority control
Human rights concepts
Identity politics
Rights