The Second Bill of Rights or Bill of Economic Rights was proposed by

United States President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United Stat ...

Franklin D. Roosevelt during his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, January 11, 1944. In his address, Roosevelt suggested that the nation had come to recognise and should now implement, a second "

bill of rights A bill of rights, sometimes called a declaration of rights or a charter of rights, is a list of the most important rights to the citizens of a country. The purpose is to protect those rights against infringement from public officials and pr ...

". Roosevelt argued that the "political rights" guaranteed by the

Constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these pr ...

and the

Bill of Rights A bill of rights, sometimes called a declaration of rights or a charter of rights, is a list of the most important rights to the citizens of a country. The purpose is to protect those rights against infringement from public officials and pr ...

had "proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness". His remedy was to declare an "economic bill of rights" to guarantee these specific rights: *

Employment Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any o ...

(

right to work The right to work is the concept that people have a human right to work, or engage in productive employment, and should not be prevented from doing so. The right to work is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognized ...

This "right to work" is not to be confused with the "

right-to-work law In the context of labor law in the United States, the term "right-to-work laws" refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions which require employees who are not union members to contribute ...

s" to which this term usually alludes inside the United States.) * An adequate income for food, shelter, and recreation * Farmers' rights to a fair income * Freedom from

unfair competition Unfair may refer to: * Double Taz and Double LeBron James in multiverses ''fair''; unfairness or injustice Injustice is a quality relating to unfairness or undeserved outcomes. The term may be applied in reference to a particular event or situ ...

and

monopolies A monopoly (from Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a speci ...

* Decent housing * Adequate medical care *

Social security Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...

Education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...

These rights have come to be known as

economic 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 ...

; although not to be enshrined within the constitution, the hope of advocating the policy was that it would be 'encoded and guaranteed by federal law'. Roosevelt stated that having such rights would guarantee American security and that 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., ...

' place in the world depended upon how far the rights had been carried into practice. This safety has been described as a state of physical welfare, as well as "economic security, social security, and moral security" by American legal scholar

Cass Sunstein Cass Robert Sunstein (born September 21, 1954) is an American legal scholar known for his studies of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, law and behavioral economics. He is also ''The New York Times'' best-selling author ...

. Roosevelt pursued a legislative agenda to enact his second bill of rights by lending Executive Branch personnel to key Senate committees. This tactic, effectively a blending of powers, produced mixed results and generated a backlash from Congress which resulted in passage of the

Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 (also known as the Congressional Reorganization Act, ch. 753, , enacted August 2, 1946) was the most comprehensive reorganization of the United States Congress in history to that date. Background The n ...

. This Act provided funding for Congress to establish its own staffing for committees.

Background

In the runup to the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, the United States had suffered through the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

following the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Roosevelt's election at the end of 1932 was based on a commitment to reform the economy and society through a "

New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Con ...

" program. The first indication of a commitment to government guarantees of social and economic rights came in an

address to the Commonwealth Club The ''Commonwealth Club Address'' (23 September 1932) was a speech made by New York Governor and Democratic presidential nominee Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on his 1932 presidential campaign. R ...

on September 23, 1932, during his campaign. The speech was written with

Adolf A. Berle Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. (; January 29, 1895 – February 17, 1971) was an American lawyer, educator, writer, and diplomat. He was the author of ''The Modern Corporation and Private Property'', a groundbreaking work on corporate governance, a pro ...

, a professor of corporate law at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. A key passage read: Throughout Roosevelt's presidency, he returned to the same theme continually over the course of the New Deal. Also in the

Atlantic Charter The Atlantic Charter was a statement issued on 14 August 1941 that set out American and British goals for the world after the end of World War II. The joint statement, later dubbed the Atlantic Charter, outlined the aims of the United States and ...

, an international commitment was made as the Allies thought about how to "win the peace" following victory in the Second World War. The US' commitment to non-interventionism in World War II ending with the 1941

Lend-Lease Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (), was a policy under which the United States supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and other Allied nations with food, oil, ...

act, and later

Pearl Harbor attacks The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, ju ...

, resulted in the mobilisation of the war state. The generous terms of the act, in conjunction with the economic growth of the US were key in allowing the US to establish new global order with the help of Allied powers in the aftermath of war. This motivation to establish a new global order provided the infrastructure for the implementation of an international standard of human rights, seen with the Second Bill of Rights and the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt ...

Akira Iriye is a historian of diplomatic history, international, and transnational history. He taught at University of Chicago and Harvard University until his retirement in 2005. In 1988 he served as president of the American Historical Association, the ...

's proposition that the US desired to transform the post war Pacific after their own image is representative of the wider desire to raise global standards to that of the US, feeding into ideals of

American Exceptionalism American exceptionalism is the belief that the United States is inherently different from other nations.Francis Fukuyama's ''

The End of History and the Last Man ''The End of History and the Last Man'' is a 1992 book of political philosophy by American political scientist Francis Fukuyama which argues that with the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy—which occurred after the Cold War (1945–1991) ...

.''

Roosevelt's speech

During Roosevelt's January 11, 1944, message to the

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

on the

State of the Union The State of the Union Address (sometimes abbreviated to SOTU) is an annual message delivered by the president of the United States to a joint session of the United States Congress near the beginning of each calendar year on the current condit ...

, he said the following:

Found footage

Roosevelt presented the January 11, 1944, State of the Union address to the public on radio as a

fireside chat The fireside chats were a series of evening radio addresses given by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, between 1933 and 1944. Roosevelt spoke with familiarity to millions of Americans about recovery from the Great De ...

from the White House:

Today I sent my Annual Message to the Congress, as required by the Constitution. It has been my custom to deliver these Annual Messages in person, and they have been broadcast to the Nation. I intended to follow this same custom this year. But like a great many other people, I have had the "flu", and although I am practically recovered, my doctor simply would not let me leave the White House to go up to the Capitol. Only a few of the newspapers of the United States can print the Message in full, and I am anxious that the American people be given an opportunity to hear what I have recommended to the Congress for this very fateful year in our history — and the reasons for those recommendations. Here is what I said ...

He asked that newsreel cameras film the last portion of the address, concerning the Second Bill of Rights. This footage was believed lost until it was uncovered in 2008 in South Carolina by

Michael Moore Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American filmmaker, author and left-wing activist. His works frequently address the topics of globalization and capitalism. Moore won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for ' ...

while researching the film '' Capitalism: A Love Story''. The footage shows Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights address in its entirety as well as a shot of the eight rights printed on a sheet of paper. (starting approximately at time code 1:55:00)

Footnotes

Citations

References

AA Berle Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. (; January 29, 1895 – February 17, 1971) was an American lawyer, educator, writer, and diplomat. He was the author of ''The Modern Corporation and Private Property'', a groundbreaking work on corporate governance, a pro ...

, 'Property, Production and Revolution' (1965
65 Columbia Law Review 1
* CR Sunstein, ''The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution--And Why We Need It More Than Ever'' (2004)

External links

FDR Second Bill of Rights Speech Footage
- YouTube
Audio recording of the speech on Youtube

FDR's Unfinished "Second Bill of Rights" – and Why We Need it Now
{{DEFAULTSORT:Second Bill Of Rights 1944 in politics 1944 in the United States 1944 speeches Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt State of the Union addresses Speeches by Franklin D. Roosevelt Human rights in the United States 78th United States Congress Articles containing video clips