Civil Liberties

The term civil liberties is often used interchangeably with civil rights. However, many theoreticians make a distinction between liberties as protections against government actions and rights as things one is permitted to do. In this schema, civil liberties are negative freedoms, while civil rights are positive ones.

In the United States, the Constitution and Bill of Rights are important sources of legislation on both civil rights and civil liberties. One of the key principles established in the Constitution is that of due process. This concept gives the individual protection from the arbitrary exercise of government power through court procedures that protect the accused and requirements the government must satisfy in order to deprive a person of life, liberty, or property.

The Bill of Rights constitutes the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, and was passed as part of the conditions for ratification in many states. These amendments were intended to provide a balance against the encroachments of a strong federal government feared by the anti-Federalists.

The First Amendment is one of the best known and most often cited parts of the Bill of Rights and secures several key civil rights and liberties. The first part ensures that the government cannot create a state church or prevent people from belonging to other religious groups, thus ensuring freedom of conscience. The rights of freedom of speech, press, peaceful assembly, and petition ensure that the government cannot silence dissenting voices. The framers of the Constitution believed in the Enlightenment principle that a variety of opinions was essential to the functioning of a democratic society by enabling decision makers to see all sides of an argument.

The Second Amendment, dealing with the militia and the right of individuals to own weapons, has become an intense point of controversy, with gun control advocates arguing that it was intended only to refer to the organized militia, such as modern National Guard units, and gun control opponents regarding the term militia as referring to all able-bodied citizens. The Third Amendment proscribes the practice used by the British government during the early part of the Revolutionary War, by which individual homeowners had to provide room and board for occupying soldiers. However, given the heavily mechanized nature of modern armies, dependent upon professional support and logistics trains that would make such arrangements impractical, the amendment has largely become of historical interest only. One need only try to imagine a suburban family trying to put up an M1A1 Abrams main battle tank and its crew to understand why.

The Fourth through Eighth Amendments provide key limits on the government's police power and establish important judicial procedures to protect the accused. Police may search a suspect's home only after obtaining a warrant, a document signed by a judge and clearly describing both the specific premises to be searched and the persons or objects being sought. With an exception for military tribunals, no one may be tried for major offenses unless they have been indicted by a grand jury, and a person who has been acquitted cannot [Page 85]be retried for the same offense. No one can be compelled to testify against him or herself, and key criteria of a fair trial are enumerated. The rights of civil litigants to a jury trial are also established, as are limits on the scope of punishment.

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