A worldwide political movement for equality before the law occured between the years 1950 and 1980.

Civil and political rights include:

Ensuring peoples' physical integrity and safety
Natural justice (procedural fairness) in law (such as the rights of the accused, including the right to a fair trial; due process; the right to seek redress or a legal remedy)
Protection from discrimination (based on gender, religion, race, sexual orientation, etc.)
Individual political freedom, including rights of individuals (freedom of thought and conscience, freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of movement) and the right to participate in civil society and politics (freedom of association, right to assemble, right to petition, right to vote)

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 civil and political rights to be the first generation of rights. Most, but not all civil and political rights are considered to be negative rights.

[edit] Guarantees of rightsCivil and political rights were among the first to be recognized and codified. In many countries, they are constitutional rights and are included in the 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 in 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.

[edit] Problems and analysisQuestions about civil and political rights have frequently emerge. 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.

[edit] See also

Civil death
Justice
Natural and legal rights (inalienable rights) (universal rights)
Police power

[edit] External links

Civil Rights entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Andrew Altman

means a right that involves evrybody in that country and wants to forward it

Rights which are considered to be unquestionable; deserved by all people under all circumstances.

Right or rights belonging to a person by reason of citizenship including especially the fundamental freedoms and privileges guaranteed by the 13th and 14th amendments and subsequent acts of Congress including the right to legal and social and economic equality.

Civil Rights are the rights of citizens to vote, to be treated equally before the law, and to share equally in the benefits of public facilities, like schools and parks. The spark that started the modern Civil Rights movement occurred in December of 1955. Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, as Montgomery, Alabama law required. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. became the spokesman for the protest that developed and led the Black boycott of the Montgomery Bus system. The result was felt nation wide.

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