SOURCES
OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE U.S.
To get a full protection of the laws of any country, a person must
be a citizen of that country or a legally accepted permanent resident alien.
There are
two principal sources of protection against any violation of basic individual
rights of American citizens. One is the constitution and laws of the state they
reside in. The other is the Constitution and laws of the United States. Because
of the importance of the U.S. Constitution, it is sometimes falsely assumed
that it contains all our rights. The U.S. Constitution provides a so-called
constitutional floor. No government - federal, state or local - can take away
the basic rights protected by the federal constitution. However, governments
can grant citizens greater rights than those in the U.S. Constitution.
Before
agreeing to ratify the U.S. Constitution, some states insisted on adoption of
ten amendments, collectively called the Bill of Rights (1791).
Although the Bill of Rights guaranteed American citizens basic freedoms that
the federal government could not infringe upon, it did not originally apply to
the states. To assure that the states did not deny the basic rights set forth
in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Congress passed the Fourteenth
Amendment in 1868. Along with the Fourteenth Amendment, the Bill of Rights
has played a major role in establishing the effective system of protection of
individual rights from violation by state and federal governments.
Certain basic rights not specifically spelled out in any document
derive directly from old English common law on which American legal system is
based.