Civil and political rights are a class of
rights and
freedoms that protect
individuals from unwarranted
government action and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the
state without discrimination or repression.
Characteristics
Political rights include:
Civil rights may include:
- Ensuring peoples' physical integrity and safety and to make sure people were not forced into labor.
- Equal access to health care, education, culture, etc.
Civil and political rights comprise the first portion of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (with
economic, social and cultural rights 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.
Guarantees of rights
Civil and political rights were among the first to be recognized and codified. In many countries, they are
constitutional rights and are included in a
bill of rights or similar document. They are also defined in
international human rights instruments, such as the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Civil and political rights need not be codified to be protected, although most
democracies worldwide do have formal written guarantees of civil and political rights. Civil rights are often considered to be
natural rights.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 1774
A Summary View of the Rights of British America that "a free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their
chief magistrate."
Custom also plays a role. Implied 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 question of who civil and political rights apply to is a subject of controversy. In many countries,
citizens have greater protections against infringement of rights than non-citizens; at the same time, civil and political rights are considered to be universal rights that apply to all
persons.
When civil and political rights are not guaranteed to all as part of
equal protection of
laws,
social unrest may ensure.
Civil rights movements over the last 60 years have resulted in an extension of civil and political rights.
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
corporations — 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.
See also
