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.
Summary of Constitutional
Rights, Powers and Duties
