The Rights of Citizens

Most countries have a written constitution providing the fundamental rights of citizens. These usually include general declarations about freedom and equality. Civil rights may be regarded as attempts to give meaning to the ideal of equality under laws and civil liberties as flowing from the ideal of freedom. Civil rights are powers or privileges that are guaranteed to the individual and protected from arbitrary removal by the government or other individuals. Civil liberties are freedoms that are guaranteed to the individual. They declare what the government cannot do; in contrast, civil rights declare what the government must do or provide.

In the USA the first ten amendments to the Constitution guarantee freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press and freedom to assemble in public and to ask the government to consider grievances. Among the other guarantees are the right in criminal cases to be judged in a public trial by an impartial jury, to be represented by a lawyer at one’s trial and freedom from cruel or unusual punishment. Because of the Bill of Rights, police cannot stop and search or arrest a person without good reason, nor can they search anyone’s home without clear cause and the permission of a court.

The Constitution recognizes other rights. A very important one is the right to “due process”. That means that no one can be deprived of life, liberty or property unless all proper legal procedures have been followed. Police, government officials and agencies and judges must be very careful not to omit or shorten these prescribed legal procedures in any case. The Constitution guarantees equal rights to all, and says no state can offer privileges to some people without offering these privileges to others.

In 1954, the father of a black girl living in Kansas decided that it was wrong that his daughter could not attend a school near their home because the school was for white children only. The father also believed the Constitution was being violated because he considered the education offered in the distant school for black children to be inferior to that offered in the white school, and he took the case to court. The Supreme Court was asked to decide whether the girl’s constitutional rights were being violated because she was forced to attend a separate and – as claimed her father – inferior school. In this case, Brown v.¹ Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the court ruled in favor of the girl’s father and several other individuals who joined the case and against the state educational system. Since that time, black children have had the right to attend school with white children in all states.

Britain is unusual because its constitution is not found in a formal written document. Instead, the constitutional rights of citizens and the powers of government are found in various case-law rulings, statutes, and even in traditions. There is a debate in Britain about having a written constitution. Some politicians and legal experts demand that Britain should have a written constitution. They argue that it would guarantee citizens’ rights better. Others argue that the lack of a written constitution has not stood in the way of a long tradition of individual liberty in Britain, and that many countries with written constitutions in fact suffer from oppressive governments which simply find ways to ignore constitutional rights.

It is essential that civil rights and liberties should be conferred by

constitution, code, statute, and case. But the question what civil rights and liberties citizens enjoy depends frequently on how these rights or liberties are actually interpreted, and how far they can be and are secured and enforced.

Note:

¹ v. = versus ['vWsqs] лат. против (в названиях судебных дел)

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