Human rights in the United States

In the United States, human rights comprise a series of rights which are legally protected by the Constitution of the United States (particularly the Bill of Rights), state constitutions, treaty and customary international law, legislation enacted by Congress and state legislatures, and state referendums and citizen's initiatives. The Federal Government has, through a ratified constitution, guaranteed unalienable rights to its citizens and (to some degree) non-citizens. These rights have evolved over time through constitutional amendments, legislation, and judicial precedent. Along with the rights themselves, the portion of the population granted these rights has expanded over time. Within the United States, federal courts have jurisdiction over international human rights laws.

The United States has generally been given high to fair marks on human rights. For example, the Freedom in the World index (based in the U.S.) lists the United States in the highest category for human freedom in civil and political rights, with 83 out of 100 points as of 2021. The Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders, ranks the U.S. 42nd out of 180 countries with a score of 72.74 out of 100 as of 2022, with lower scores indicating worse press freedom. The Democracy Index, published by the Economist Intelligence Unit, described the United States as a "flawed democracy," with a score of 7.85 out of 10, making it the 26th most democratic country in the world as of 2021. The Human Rights Measurement Initiative finds that the United States performs worse than average for Quality of Life, Safety from the State, and Empowerment rights compared to other high-income countries.

Despite the fair to high rankings in reports on human rights, the United States also receives significant domestic and international criticism for its human rights record. Much of the criticism is directed at the existence of systemic racism, weaker labor protections than most western countries, imprisonment of debtors, criminalization of homelessness and poverty, invasion of its citizens' privacy through mass surveillance programs, police brutality, police impunity and corruption, incarceration of citizens for profit, mistreatment of prisoners, the highest number of juveniles in the prison system of any country, some of the longest prison sentences in the world, continued use of the death penalty despite its abolition in nearly all other western countries, abuse of both legal and illegal immigrants (including children), the facilitation of state terrorism, a health care system favoring profit via privatization over the wellbeing of citizens, the lack of a universal health care program unlike most other developed countries, one of the most expensive and worst-performing health care systems of any developed country, continued support for foreign dictators (even when genocide has been committed), forced disappearances, extraordinary renditions, extrajudicial detentions, the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and black sites, and extrajudicial targeted killings (e.g. the Disposition Matrix).

History

The first human rights organization in the Thirteen Colonies of British America, dedicated to the abolition of slavery, was formed by Anthony Benezet in 1775. A year later, the Declaration of Independence announced that the Thirteen Colonies regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. The Declaration stated "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness", echoing John Locke's phrase "life, liberty, and property". This view of human liberties, which originated from the European Enlightenment, postulates that fundamental rights are not granted by a divine or supernatural being to monarchs who then grant them to subjects, but are granted by a divine or supernatural being to each man (but not woman) and are inalienable and inherent.

After the Revolutionary War, the former thirteen colonies went through a pre-government phase of more than a decade, with much debate about the form of government they would have. The United States Constitution, adopted in 1787 through ratification at a national convention and conventions in the colonies, created a republic that guaranteed several rights and civil liberties. However, it did not extend voting rights in the United States beyond white male property owners (about 6% of the population). The Constitution referred to "Persons", not "Men" as was used in the Declaration of Independence. It also omitted any reference to terms such as a "Creator" or "God" and any authority derived or divined therefrom, and allowed "affirmation" in lieu of an "oath" if preferred. The Constitution guaranteed rights and provided that they belonged to all Persons (presumably meaning men and women, and perhaps children, although the developmental distinction between children and adults poses issues and has been the subject of subsequent amendments, as discussed below). Some of this conceptualization may have arisen from the significant Quaker segment of the population in the colonies, especially in the Delaware Valley, and their religious views that all human beings, regardless of sex, age, race, or other characteristics, had the same Inner light. Quaker and Quaker-derived views would have informed the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, including the direct influence of some of the Framers of the Constitution, such as John Dickinson and Thomas Mifflin, who were either Quakers themselves or came from regions which were either founded or heavily populated by Quakers.

Dickinson, Mifflin and other Framers who objected to slavery were outvoted on that question, however, and the original Constitution sanctioned slavery (although it was not based on either the race or any other characteristic of the slave) and, through the Three-Fifths Compromise, it counted slaves (who were not defined by race) as three-fifths of a Person for purposes of distribution of taxes and representation in the House of Representatives (although the slaves themselves were discriminated against in voting for such representatives).

As the new Constitution took effect in practice, concerns about individual liberties and the concentration of power at the federal level, gave rise to the amendment of the Constitution through the adoption of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. However, this had little impact on judgements by the courts for the first 130 years after its ratification.

Courts and legislatures also began to vary in the interpretation of "Person", with some jurisdictions narrowing the meaning of "Person" to cover only people with property, only men, or only white men. For example, although women had been voting in some states, such as New Jersey, since the founding of the United States, and prior to that in the colonial era, other states denied them the vote. In 1756 Lydia Chapin Taft voted, casting a vote in the local town hall meeting in place of her deceased husband. In 1777 women lost the right to exercise their vote in New York, in 1780 women lost the right to exercise their vote in Massachusetts, and in 1784 women lost the right to exercise their vote in New Hampshire.
From 1775 until 1807, the state constitution in New Jersey permitted all persons worth over fifty pounds (about $7,800 adjusted for inflation, with the election laws referring to the voters as "he or she") to vote; provided they had this property, free black men and single women regardless of race therefore had the vote until 1807, but not married women, who could have no independent claim to ownership of fifty pounds (anything they owned or earned belonged to their husbands by the Common law of Coverture). In 1790, the law was revised to specifically include women, but in 1807 the law was again revised to exclude them, an unconstitutional act since the state constitution specifically made any such change dependent on the general suffrage. See Women's suffrage in the United States. Through the doctrine of coverture, many states also denied married women the right to own property in their own name, although most allowed single women (widowed, divorced or never married) the "Person" status of men, sometimes pursuant to the common law concept of a femme sole. Over the years, a variety of claimants sought to assert that discrimination against women in voting, in property ownership, in occupational license, and other matters was unconstitutional given the Constitution's use of the term "Person", but the all-male courts did not give this fair hearing. See, e.g., Bradwell v. Illinois.

In the 1860s, after decades of conflict over southern states' continued practice of slavery, and northern states' outlawing it, the Civil War was fought, and in its aftermath the Constitution was amended to prohibit slavery and to prohibit states' denying rights granted in the Constitution. Among these amendments was the Fourteenth Amendment, which included an Equal Protection Clause which seemed to clarify that courts and states were prohibited in narrowing the meaning of "Persons". After the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted, Susan B. Anthony, buttressed by the equal protection language, voted. She was prosecuted for this, however, and ran into an all-male court ruling that women were not "Persons"; the court levied a fine but it was never collected.

Fifty years later, in 1920, the Constitution was amended again, with the Nineteenth Amendment to definitively prohibit discrimination against women's suffrage.

In the 1970s, the Burger Court made a series of rulings clarifying that discrimination against women in the status of being Persons violated the Constitution and acknowledged that previous court rulings to the contrary had been Sui generis and an abuse of power. The most often cited of these is Reed v. Reed, which held that any discrimination against either sex in the rights associated with Person status must meet a strict scrutiny standard.

The 1970s also saw the adoption of the Twenty-sixth Amendment, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of age, for Persons 18 years old and over, in voting. Other attempts to address the developmental distinction between children and adults in Person status and rights have been addressed mostly by the Supreme Court, with the Court recognizing in 2012, in Miller v. Alabama a political and biological principle that children are different from adults.

In 1945 the members of the United Nations organization completed the drafting of its founding text – the United Nations charter: The USA played a significant role in this process.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Drafting Committee was chaired by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who was known for her human rights advocacy. Similarly, for the United States government and its citizens, much remained uncertain about the future impact, force, and reach of international human rights. Eventually the United States had not yet developed a policy approach regarding whether or not it would recognize international human rights within a domestic context. Certainly there were already some domestic political attempts, as for example President Truman's Committee on Civil rights, which authored a report in 1947 initializing the possibility to apply the UN charter in order to combat racial discrimination in the US. Now that the United States had successfully adopted the UDHR, obviously it seemed like human rights would play a leading part in domestic law within the US. Still there was harsh controversy over the question whether to apply international law on the inner-land-basis. William H. Fitzpatrick won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1951 for his editorials that repeatedly warned against international human rights overthrowing the supreme law of the land. Indeed, Fitzpatrick's concerns and motivations – as well as those of his readers – stood for the longstanding, bitter social and political struggles that divided much of the United States at the time, keeping in mind that in the 1940s and 1950s racial divisions, political exclusion, and gender inequalities were basic facts of American social life.

However, today there is little worry in the United States about the effect that human rights might have on its domestic law. Over the past few decades, the United States government has often held itself up as a strong supporter of human rights in the international arena. Nonetheless, in the view of the government human rights are still an international rather than a domestic phenomenon – representing more of choice than obligation.

Having today overcome many of the inequalities from more than half a dozen decades before, still the United States is in violation of the Declaration, in as much that "everyone has the right to leave any country" because the government may prevent the entry and exit of anyone from the United States for foreign policy, national security, or child support rearage reasons by revoking their passport. The United States is also in violation of the United Nations' human rights Convention on the Rights of the Child which requires both parents to have a relationship with the child. Conflict between the human rights of the child and those of a mother or father who wishes to leave the country without paying child support or doing the personal work of child care for his child can be considered to be a question of negative and positive rights.

Legal framework

Domestic legal protection structure

According to ''Human Rights: The Essential Reference'', "the American Declaration of Independence was the first civic document that met a modern definition of human rights." The Constitution recognizes a number of inalienable human rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, the right to keep and bear arms, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, and the right to a fair trial by jury.

Constitutional amendments have been enacted as the needs of the society evolved. The Ninth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment recognized that not all human rights were enumerated in the original United States Constitution. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 are examples of human rights that were enumerated by Congress well after the Constitution's writing. The scope of the legal protections of human rights afforded by the US government is defined by case law, particularly by the precedent of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Within the federal government, the debate about what may or may not be an emerging human right is held in two forums: the United States Congress, which may enumerate these; and the Supreme Court, which may articulate rights that the law does not spell out. Additionally, individual states, through court action or legislation, have often protected human rights not recognized at federal level. For example, Massachusetts was the first of several states to recognize same sex marriage.

Effect of international treaties

In the context of human rights and treaties that recognize or create individual rights, U.S. constitutional law makes a distinction between self-executing and non-self-executing treaties. Non-self-executing treaties, which ascribe rights that under the constitution may be assigned by law, require legislative action to execute the contract (treaty) before it becomes a part of domestic law. There are also cases that explicitly require legislative approval according to the Constitution, such as cases that could commit the U.S. to declare war or appropriate funds.

Treaties regarding human rights, which create a duty to refrain from acting in a particular manner or confer specific rights, are generally held to be self-executing, requiring no further legislative action. In cases where legislative bodies refuse to recognize otherwise self-executing treaties by ''declaring them to be non-self-executing'' in an act of legislative non-recognition, constitutional scholars argue that such acts violate the separation of powersin cases of controversy, the judiciary, not Congress, has the authority under Article III to apply treaty law to cases before the court. This is a key provision in cases where the Congress declares a human rights treaty to be non-self-executing, for example, by contending it does not add anything to human rights under U.S. domestic law. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is one such case, which, while ratified after more than two decades of inaction, was done so with reservations, understandings, and declarations.

Under the principle of ''pacta sunt servanda'', a country may not invoke provisions of its domestic laws or constitution as justification for failure to comply with its international law obligations. Therefore, if a human rights treaty has been ratified by the U.S. but is not considered self-executing, or has not yet been implemented by legislation, it is nonetheless binding on the U.S. government as a matter of international law.

Equality

Racial

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States ... are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" In addition, Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the denial of a citizen of the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude".

The United States has enacted comprehensive legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and national origin in the workplace in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (CRA). The CRA is perhaps the most prominent civil rights legislation enacted in modern times, has served as a model for subsequent anti-discrimination laws and has greatly expanded civil rights protections in a wide variety of settings.Capozzi, Irene Y., ''The Civil Rights Act: background, statutes and primer'', Nova Publishers, 2006, , page 6 The 1991 provision created recourse for victims of such discrimination for punitive damages and full back pay. In addition to individual civil recourse, the United States possesses anti-discrimination government enforcement bodies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Beginning in 1965, the United States also began a program of affirmative action that not only obliges employers not to discriminate, but requires them to provide preferences for groups protected under the Civil Rights Act to increase their numbers where they are judged to be underrepresented. Such affirmative action programs are also applied in college admissions.

The United States also prohibits the imposition of any "... voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color," which prevents the use of grandfather clauses, literacy tests, poll taxes and white primaries.

Prior to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, slavery was legal in some states of the United States until 1865. Influenced by the principles of the Religious Society of Friends, Anthony Benezet formed the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1775, believing that all ethnic groups were considered equal and human slavery was incompatible with Christian beliefs. Benezet extended the recognition of human rights to Native Americans and argued for a peaceful solution to the violence between Native and European Americans. Benjamin Franklin became the president of Benezet's abolition society in the late 18th century. In addition, the Fourteenth Amendment was interpreted to permit what was termed ''Separate but equal'' treatment of minorities until the United States Supreme Court overturned this interpretation in 1954, which consequently overturned Jim Crow laws. Native Americans did not have citizenship rights until the Dawes Act of 1887 and the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.

Following the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama was sworn in as the first African-American president of the United States on January 20, 2009. In his Inaugural Address, President Obama stated "A man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath ... So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled".

Sex

The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from denying any citizen the right to vote because of that citizen's sex.Nineteenth Amendment
CRS/LII Annotated Constitution While this does not necessarily guarantee all women the right to vote, as suffrage qualifications are determined by individual states, it does mean that states' suffrage qualifications may not prevent women from voting due to their gender.

The United States has enacted comprehensive CRA legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender in the workplace.Gould, William B., ''Agenda for Reform: The Future of Employment Relationships and the Law''< MIT Press, 1996, , page 27 The 1991 provision created recourse for discrimination victims for punitive damages and full back pay. In addition to individual civil recourse, the United States possesses anti-discrimination government enforcement bodies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Beginning in 1965, the United States also began a program of affirmative action that not only obliges employers not to discriminate, but also requires them to provide preferences for groups protected under the CRA to increase their numbers where they are judged to be underrepresented.James W. Russell, ''Double standard: social policy in Europe and the United States'', Rowman & Littlefield, 2006, , pages 147-150 Such affirmative action programs are also applied in college admissions.

The United States has legally defined sexual harassment in the workplace.Zippel, Kathrina, ''Sexual Harassment and Transnational Relations: Why Those Concerned With German-American Relations Should Care'', American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, 2002, page 6 Because sexual harassment is therefore a Civil Rights violation, individual legal rights of those harassed in the workplace exist in the United States.

The Selective Service System does not require women to register for a possible military draft. Men are required to sign up for the Selective Service System however.

According to Eman Abdelhadi, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, Muslim women have lower incomes than other women.

The result of investigating of the UN Working Group on discrimination against women in law and practice associated with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) was that “The US, which is a leading State in formulating international human rights standards, is allowing its women to lag behind”. They declared that "the US is one of only seven countries which have not ratified the treaty, widely known as CEDAW."

According to the report of HRW, The patchwork of healthcare coverage in the Trump administration caused the loss of insurance for many women and girls who are at risk of deadly diseases such as gynecological cancer.

Disability

The United States has adopted antidiscrimination legislation for people with disabilities, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA).Midgley, James, and Michelle Livermore, ''The Handbook of Social Policy'', SAGE, 2008, , page 448 The ADA reflected a dramatic shift toward the employment of persons with disabilities to enhance the labor force participation of qualified persons with disabilities and to reduce their dependence on government entitlement programs. Blanck, Peter David and David L. Braddock, ''The Americans with Disabilities Act and the emerging workforce: employment of people with mental retardation'', AAMR, 1998, , page 3 The ADA amends the CRA and permits plaintiffs to recover punitive damages.Capozzi, Irene Y., ''The Civil Rights Act: background, statutes and primer'', Nova Publishers, 2006, , page 60-61 The ADA has been instrumental in the evolution of disability discrimination law in the United States. Although ADA Title I was found to be unconstitutional, the Supreme Court has extended the protection to people with Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Federal benefits such as Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) are often administratively viewed in the United States as being primarily or near-exclusively the entitlement only of impoverished

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases