Civil Liberties vs Civil Rights
Civil liberties refer to the basic rights and freedoms that are guaranteed to individuals, such as freedom of speech and religion, and protection from government interference. Civil rights, on the other hand, are the rights that protect individuals from discrimination and ensure equal treatment under the law, such as the right to vote and the right to fair housing.
4 Key excerpts on "Civil Liberties vs Civil Rights"
eBook - ePub- Howard Davis(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Willan(Publisher)
...1 Introduction and underlying values DOI: 10.4324/9781843924548-1 1.1 Introduction A group of political demonstrators are arrested when they hold a meeting on a public road, a desperately ill man wishes to choose the time of his death, a journalist with an important story about an alleged terrorist group is faced with prison for not disclosing her source. These are examples of issues about civil liberties law. In this chapter the values that underlie civil liberties law are introduced as are the broad constitutional theories, the theories of state power, which give the law its legitimacy in relation to those values. Finally, the idea of human rights is introduced since it is in relation to that idea that civil liberties law is being restated. A principal aim of this book is to integrate human rights law into the common law and statutory rules which make up the subject. 1.2 Values: democracy and privacy Civil liberties law is to do with the relationship between citizens and the state in so far as this relationship affects two features of social life presumed to be valuable. These two ‘features’ are, first, ‘democracy’ or the good of political participation. Civil liberties law is concerned with identifying the reasonable scope of the freedom of people to participate in political processes and seek to change or maintain the laws, government policies or public opinion. The second ‘feature’ is the idea of privacy. Civil liberties law is concerned with the reasonable scope of the claim that there is a significant part of a person’s life that should be determined by that person alone and in respect of which the state, through its laws, should have no say...
eBook - ePub- Mark Frezzo(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...3 Civil and Political Rights After briefly reviewing the issue of how and why to classify human rights, this chapter explores the most widely accepted category of human rights (especially in the US and elsewhere in the Western world), namely the civil and political rights, proclaimed under the banner of liberty, that (a) protect human beings from abuses perpetrated not only by one another, but also by the state itself, (b) allow human beings to participate freely and fully in civil society and political life, and (c) permit human beings to explore and nurture their identities, interests, ideas, beliefs, and values without undue interference from political authorities. In a nutshell, civil and political rights involve not only checks on government power (enshrined in law and ensured by the court system), but also protections provided by the government that allow individuals to flourish in society. For this reason, civil and political rights are often treated as the most “important” rights, an understandable assumption that this book seeks, nonetheless, to challenge. Preliminary Questions about Civil and Political Rights As we have seen in previous chapters, human rights are, by definition, relational. In other words, while it is useful for explanatory purposes to classify human rights in one way or another, it is equally important to recognize that different types of rights make sense only in relation to one another. Held by the UN in Vienna in 1993, the World Conference on Human Rights affirmed the connection between civil and political rights and other types of rights (http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/vienna.aspx)...
eBook - ePub- Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...Freedom of speech is limited only by prohibitions on hate speech and propaganda for war (ICCPR, Article 20). Participation in political life also includes the right to vote and to take part in the government by holding political office or being part of the government bureaucracy (ICCPR, Article 25). All these rights enable citizens to be part of the political community, active contributors to, rather than mere recipients of, decisions that affect them. Civil and political rights are not merely individual entitlements: they are collective goods that permit societies to function well. 3 They are the basis for civil society. They permit citizens to engage in civil discourse with each other and to engage with the state and other authorities without fear of repression or physical punishment. They permit citizens to join with one another in common causes, and to promote their causes to the wider society and the government without having to resort to threats of violence before the state will pay attention to their concerns. When states protect civil and political rights, there is usually a high level of trust both among citizens and between public authorities and the citizens they ostensibly serve. Citizens are viewed as competent members of society, whom the state should consult before making decisions or if policies need correction. In academic debates on human rights, some commentators argue that “civil and political rights have been privileged,” as opposed to economic, social and cultural, or collective human rights. 4 The opposite is true, however. Critical scholars of human rights devote much time and space to the defense of economic, social and cultural, and collective human rights, while an extraordinarily taken-for-granted attitude exists toward civil and political rights, as if they are either unnecessary or so obviously protected as to be unworthy of discussion...
eBook - ePubMediating Human Rights
Media, Culture and Human Rights Law
- Lieve Gies(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Human rights and British-style civil liberties only narrowly intersect, showing common ground only in relation to issues including detention without trial, the prohibition of torture and freedom of speech. Human rights gains involving minority constituencies, for example, women, gay people, prisoners and travellers, by contrast, are likely to be dismissed by critics who are pro-civil liberties but anti-human rights as novelty rights which threaten to undermine true freedom and individual responsibility. This was the case, for example, in 2010 when a gay couple brought a legal action for sexual discrimination against the Christian owners of a bed and breakfast who had refused to provide accommodation to the couple on religious grounds. The MP Chris Grayling, then a member of the Conservative Shadow Cabinet, publicly defended the owners, arguing that it was their right to decide who should be allowed to stay in their home (BBC News 2010b). The case could be seen as a textbook example of how equality rights and the classic-liberal notion of freedom as the right to be left alone may be framed as being in direct competition with each other. Such tensions have become more pronounced with the ascendency of identity politics promoting an agenda of cultural recognition for specific groups. For example, human rights are also a source of deep division between conservatives and liberals in the US...
