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Civil Liberties “Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. ” ????”Abraham Lincoln. The Bill of Rights was made as a promise to the smaller states that feared centralism so they could sign the constitution. The Bill of Rights or the Ten Amendments started in 1791 and the last was in 1992. Moreover thanks to the Farmers, the constitution can be changed or have many amendments depending on the opinion of different generations. In recognition to the Farmers, Americans have a written document that gives them any freedoms and rights.
One of the many freedoms listed in the First Amendment is the freedom of religion. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof… ” ????”U. S. Constitution, First Amendment. The Founding Fathers knew about history and they knew about how the religion had influenced the Puritans’ laws back in the 16th and 17th century and how it could influence the future generations. Within the First Amendment lay two main clauses: the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. The Establishment
Clause prohibits the government from establishing a national religion or the envelopment of a religion privileging one more than the other. The second clause is the clause of Free Exercise Clause which states that Congress cannot prohibit the exercise of any religion. Even though it is stated in the First Amendment, the Supreme Court has stated that this right is not absolute. The Supreme Court has stated in Reynolds vs. United States (1878) that it is true, Congress cannot pass a law restricting religion beliefs but it can restrict its practices.
Between many of freedoms he First Amendment gives us lays the Free Speech right. “Congress shall make no law respecting or abridging the freedom of speech. ” It all started in Athens between 800 and 400 B. C. E. when certain citizens were allowed to speak without fear. The Athenians had laws about the freedom of speech we still recognize and use, such as Slander, the action or crime of making a false spoken statement damaging to a person’s reputation; and some others that punished the people for criticizing the government severely and blaspheming of the sacred.
Even though Athens was reatly recognized by its freedom of speech, the freedom was not absolute; it gave the right only to male adult citizens. After certain time the democratic government came down and one-man began to rule. The persons that ruled were called Caesars and they gave “dissent by permission” a practice that extended to Europe and the British Isles. The change to this situation began when King John signed the Magna Carta, a document that worked as the base and path opener to the constitutional liberty of England and the United States.
Dissent by permission was gradually expanded to what now it is called the freedom of speech. It has been extended, modified, brought and adopted to the United States as part of the Bill of Rights. Although the freedom of speech is explicitly stated in the United States’ Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court has not taken it word by word. The Supreme Court alleges that “speech” lies between belief and action and even though it cannot punish or regulate been declared by the Supreme Court that speech is protected unless it falls within: libel, obscenity, fghting words and commercial speech.
According to Magleby, Light and Nemacheck these are the definitions of the unprotected speech: “Libel” is efined as the written defamation of another person; “Obscenity’ is defined as the quality of a work that, taken as a whole, appeals to a prurient interest in sex by depicting sexual conduct in a patently offensive way and that lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value; “Fighting Words” are words that by their very nature inflict injury on those to whom they are addressed or incite them to acts or violence; “Commercial Speech” is advertisements and commercial products and services; they receive less First Amendment primarily to discourage false and misleading ads. These four definitions fall into the Unprotected Speech category. The press was considered a major subject to the Founding Fathers that is why they included it in the First Amendment, specifically stating that Congress shall make no law respecting or abridging the freedom of the press. The founding fathers knew that without the freedom of the press it would be hard to have an informed free nation.
However as the time has passed and even though it is written in the First Amendment the Supreme Court has stated that the freedom of the press is not an absolute freedom. For example, in New York Times Co. . United States (1971) also known as the Pentagon Papers Case, President Nixon and its government were trying to stop the New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing some files from the Pentagon because it could threaten the national security. The case went to the Supreme Court which stated that the government of President Nixon could not stop the publishing of those documents because it did not represent an imminent threat to the National Security and if they would have done so President Nixon and its government would violate the Freedom of the Press.
The freedom of Assembly ives the American people the right to stand up for what they believe in but in some cases the Government has been fearful of its power. For instance, in 1798 Congress passed the Sedition Act “This law made it a crime for any person to “unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States” (Bresler, 24) This law expired in 1801 and the President pardoned the persons that were convicted because of it. Another right that is guaranteed by the constitution of the United States is the right to Property. The Fifth Amendment clearly specifies that “… nor shall private property be taken for public use, without Just compensation. Within property there is an Eminent Domain which specifies that the government can take private property to make it public. In addition, the Regulatory takings can make that a person loose its property to the government because it could be declared unsuitable and the worst part without compensation. Even though roads or bridges bring up the economy, states and localities have created laws that prohibit the government to take homes calling it Regulatory takings. As people have the rights to property they also have the right to privacy. According to the Merriam-Webster, Privacy is the state of being alone or the state of being away from other people.
Privacy being a right protected by the United States constitution has covered many cases in which the privacy has been fought. For example, the Cross Creek trial was a trial in which Zelma Cason a close friend of the had written about her. The case was declared in favor of Rawlings but later on Cason appealed and she won the case and in addition she won a compensation of “$1. 0 and the usual court costs. ” (Nassif, 136) Another case that has been controversial before of 1800 is abortion. Abortion has been recorded that it was done many centuries ago in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome; it is Just that it was never recorded as a crime but a form of birth control. Hull, Charles 12-14) The women in these ancient regions used herbal potions to be able to expel the fetus something that is still used in the modern day by the women that cannot afford to pay for an abortion made “clinically’. The first case heard by the Supreme Court occurred in Massachusetts in 1812, but it was declined because there was not enough evidence to show that the woman had had an abortion. The case that really woke up many persons’ attention was the Roe v. Wade case. In which a single pregnant woman tried to stop the government of Texas to one prosecute Dr. Hallford that was doing the procedures and second to stop infringing the Ninth Amendment right to choose whether to have children. The Supreme Court ruled that abortion is legal within the first trimester of pregnancy in 1973.
Now in the Obama campaign it has been stablished that a woman can abort ????””(1) if the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest; or (2) in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness… “(Hull, Charles 330) When should civil liberties be ignored because of “National Security’? The rights of criminal suspects are not to be ignored, much less because of race. To avoid any problems conducting searches or seizures the government is entitled to have a search warrant which is a “writ issued by a magistrate that authorizes the police to search a particular place or person, pecifying the place to be searched and the objects to be seized. ” (Magleby, Light, Nemacheck, 417) General warrants are unconstitutional because if it was constitutional it would violate the rights given by the Fourth Amendment.
When the local or national authorities decide it is necessary to arrest a suspect they have to read the Miranda Rights to the suspect which specifies that the suspect has the right to: remain silent and that anything they say can and will be used against them, have a lawyer representing them even though they can afford one, have the attorney while olice questioning, and terminate the interrogation whenever. The Farmers were very smart people that decided to put a nation as closer as it can be by putting together a written document that not only established how the government runs but the rights and liberties of its citizens. Civil liberties help Americans to be able to speak and protest freely, present any law suit when they disagree, have rights protecting their privacy and property and so many more.
The Civil Liberties listed and even the non-listed in the constitution are a real example for other countries. MAGLEBY, , LIGHT, and NEMACHECK. Civil Liberoes. 2011. Pearson, 2011. 409-410. Print. ?????? Bezanson, Randall. How Free Can the Press Be?. 1st ed. Urbana and Chicago: Board of Trustees, 2003. 7-9. Print. ?????? Bresler, Robert. Freedom of Association. 1st ed. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLlO’s, 2004. 23-26. Print. ?????? Tedford, Thomas, and Dale Herbeck. Freedom of Speech in the United States. 7th ed. Pennsylvania: Strata Publishing Inc. , 2013. 1-3. Print. ?????? Nassif, Patricia. Invasion of Privacy. 1st ed. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1988. 135-137. Print.