Civil Liberties In The United States
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Civil Liberties In The United States
Civil liberties in the United States are certain unalienable rights retained by (as opposed to privileges granted to) citizens of the United States under the Constitution of the United States, as interpreted and clarified by the Supreme Court of the United States and lower federal courts. Civil liberties are simply defined as individual legal and constitutional protections from entities more powerful than an individual, for example, parts of the government, other individuals, or corporations. The explicitly defined liberties make up the Bill of Rights, including freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and the right to privacy. There are also many liberties of people not defined in the Constitution, as stated in the Ninth Amendment: ''The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.'' The extent of civil liberties and the percentage of the population of the United States who had access to these l ...
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Unalienable Rights
Some philosophers distinguish two types of rights, natural rights and legal rights. * Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government, and so are ''universal'', ''fundamental'' and ''inalienable'' (they cannot be repealed by human laws, though one can forfeit their enjoyment through one's actions, such as by violating someone else's rights). Natural law is the law of natural rights. * Legal rights are those bestowed onto a person by a given legal system (they can be modified, repealed, and restrained by human laws). The concept of positive law is related to the concept of legal rights. Natural law first appeared in ancient Greek philosophy, and was referred to by Roman philosopher Cicero. It was subsequently alluded to in the Bible, and then developed in the Middle Ages by Catholic philosophers such as Albert the Great and his pupil Thomas Aquinas. During the Age of Enlightenment, the concept of natural laws was ...
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United States Free Speech Exceptions
In the United States, some categories of speech are not protected by the First Amendment. According to the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Constitution protects free speech while allowing limitations on certain categories of speech. Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also an exception to free speech. Along with communicative restrictions, less protection is afforded to uninhibited speech when the government acts as subsidizer or speaker, is an employer, controls education, or regulates the mail, airwaves, legal bar, military, prisons, and immigration. Incitement The Supreme Court has held that "advoc ...
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Twenty-fourth Amendment To The United States Constitution
The Twenty-fourth Amendment (Amendment XXIV) of the United States Constitution prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 27, 1962, and was ratified by the states on January 23, 1964. Southern states of the former Confederate States of America adopted poll taxes in laws of the late 19th century and new constitutions from 1890 to 1908, after the Democratic Party had generally regained control of state legislatures decades after the end of Reconstruction, as a measure to prevent African Americans and often poor whites (and following passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, women) from voting. Use of the poll taxes by states was held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1937 decision ''Breedlove v. Suttles''. When the 24th Amendment was ratified in 1964, five states still retained a po ...
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Fifteenth Amendment To The United States Constitution
The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments. In the final years of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed, Congress repeatedly debated the rights of the millions of black freedmen. By 1869, amendments had been passed to abolish slavery and provide citizenship and equal protection under the laws, but the election of Ulysses S. Grant to the presidency in 1868 convinced a majority of Republicans that protecting the franchise of black male voters was important for the party's future. On February 26, 1869, after rejecting more sweeping versions of a suffrage amendment, Republicans proposed a compromise amendment which would ban franchise restrictions on the basis of race, colo ...
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Fourteenth Amendment To The United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Often considered as one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by the states of the defeated Confederacy, which were forced to ratify it in order to regain representation in Congress. The amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark Supreme Court decisions such as ''Brown v. Board of Education'' (1954) regarding racial segregation, ''Roe v. Wade'' (1973) regarding abortion ( overturned in 2022), ''Bush v. Gore'' (2000) regarding the 2000 presidential election, and ''Obergefell v. Hodges'' (2015) regarding same-sex marriage. The amendment ...
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Lawrence V
Lawrence may refer to: Education Colleges and universities * Lawrence Technological University, a university in Southfield, Michigan, United States * Lawrence University, a liberal arts university in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States Preparatory & high schools * Lawrence Academy at Groton, a preparatory school in Groton, Massachusetts, United States * Lawrence College, Ghora Gali, a high school in Pakistan * Lawrence School, Lovedale, a high school in India * The Lawrence School, Sanawar, a high school in India Research laboratories * Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, United States * Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, United States People * Lawrence (given name), including a list of people with the name * Lawrence (surname), including a list of people with the name * Lawrence (band), an American soul-pop group * Lawrence (judge royal) (died after 1180), Hungarian nobleman, Judge royal 1164–1172 * Lawrence (musician), Lawrence Hayward (born 1961), British musician * ...
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Second Amendment To The United States Constitution
The Second Amendment (Amendment II) to the United States Constitution protects the Right to keep and bear arms in the United States, right to keep and bear arms. It was ratified on December 15, 1791, along with nine other articles of the United States Bill of Rights, Bill of Rights. In ''District of Columbia v. Heller'' (2008), the Supreme Court of the United States, Supreme Court affirmed for the first time that the right belongs to individuals, for self-defense in the home, while also including, as ''dicta'', that the right is not unlimited and does not preclude the existence of certain long-standing prohibitions such as those forbidding "the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill" or restrictions on "the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons". In ''McDonald v. City of Chicago'' (2010) the Supreme Court ruled that State governments of the United States, state and Local government in the United States, local governments are Incorporation of the Bill of Rig ...
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Bodily Harm
Bodily harm is a legal term of art used in the definition of both statutory and common law offences in Australia, Canada, England and Wales and other common law jurisdictions. It is a synonym for injury or bodily injury and similar expressions, though it may be used with a precise and limited meaning in any given jurisdiction. The expression grievous bodily harm first appeared in a statute in Lord Ellenborough's Act (1803). Canada In the Canadian Criminal Code, "bodily harm" is defined as "any hurt or injury to a person that interferes with the health or comfort of the person and that is more than merely transient or trifling in nature." England and Wales The expression is not defined by any statute. It currently appears in a number of offences under the Offences against the Person Act 1861 (ss. 18, 20, 23, 26, 28, 29, 31, 35, and 47) and in the offence of burglary under the Theft Act 1968 (s. 9). It is also used in the definition of murder (as it appears in case law) in the ...
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Fighting Words
Fighting words are written or spoken words intended to incite hatred or violence from their target. Specific definitions, freedoms, and limitations of fighting words vary by jurisdiction. The term ''fighting words'' is also used in a general sense of words that when uttered tend to create (deliberately or not) a verbal or physical confrontation by their mere usage. Canada In Canada, freedom of expression is generally protected under Section 2 of Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Criminal Code, however, limits these freedoms and provides for several forms of punishable hate speech. The form of punishable hate speech considered to encompass ''fighting words'' is identified in Section 319: United States The fighting words doctrine, in United States constitutional law, is a limitation to freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In 1942, the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine by a 9–0 decision in ''Chapli ...
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National Security
National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military attack, national security is widely understood to include also non-military dimensions, including the security from terrorism, minimization of crime, economic security, energy security, environmental security, food security, and cyber-security. Similarly, national security risks include, in addition to the actions of other nation states, action by violent non-state actors, by narcotic cartels, and by multinational corporations, and also the effects of natural disasters. Governments rely on a range of measures, including political, economic, and military power, as well as diplomacy, to safeguard the security of a nation state. They may also act to build the conditions of security regionally and internationally by reducing transnational caus ...
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Obscenity
An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin ''obscēnus'', ''obscaenus'', "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Such loaded language can be used to indicate strong moral repugnance and outrage, in expressions such as "obscene profits" and "the obscenity of war". As a legal term, it usually refers to graphic depictions of people engaged in sexual and excretory activity, and related utterances of profane speech. United States obscenity law In the United States, issues of obscenity raise issues of limitations on the freedom of speech and of the press, which are otherwise protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Federal obscenity law in the U.S. is unusual in that there is no uniform national standard. Former Justice Potter Stewart of the Supreme Court of the United States, in attempting to classify what material constituted exactly "what is ...
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