David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Jack Alan Reynolds
Learn more about PhilPapers
Social Philosophy and Policy 8 (2):1 (1991)
For all the discussion and debate about civil rights, it is striking how little attention is given initially to the question of what civil rights are. There is no well-understood principle of inclusion or exclusion that defines the category. Nor is there an agreed list of civil rights, except perhaps a very short, avowedly nonexhaustive one, with rather imprecise entries. Yet, if the extension of the category of civil rights is uncertain, its significance is not. All agree that it is a principal task of government to protect civil rights, so much so, indeed, that a failure to protect them usually is regarded as outweighing substantial achievements of other kinds. But a right does not count as a civil right just because it is valuable or valued. Some of the rights most often asserted as civil rights reflect practical interests of their possessors considerably less than other actual or potential rights not so identified. In the United States, familiar legal doctrine provides a shortcut to the specification of civil rights. They are whatever is embraced by the provisions of the federal Civil Rights Acts: the right to vote, fair housing, equal employment opportunity, and so forth. That path, however, is not adequate for the present purpose. For the most part, the statutes refer explicitly or implicitly to federal constitutional rights, and the collective reference to them as civil rights is unexplained. The bases of the constitutional rights are too various to be a reliable guide to an independently designated category of civil rights
|Keywords||No keywords specified (fix it)|
|Categories||categorize this paper)|
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server
Configure custom proxy (use this if your affiliation does not provide a proxy)
|Through your library|
References found in this work BETA
No references found.
Citations of this work BETA
Anna Elisabetta Galeotti (1998). Neutrality and Recognition. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 1 (3):37-53.
Similar books and articles
Derrick Darby (2009). Rights, Race, and Recognition. Cambridge University Press.
Albert A. Blum (1988). Negotiations Needed in South Africa: Lessons to Be Learned From Labor. Journal of Business Ethics 7 (12):933-939.
Mary Lyn Stoll (2005). Corporate Rights to Free Speech? Journal of Business Ethics 58 (1-3):261 - 269.
A. I. Melden (1977). Rights and Persons. University of California Press.
Rex J. Ahdar (2001). Adrift in a Sea of Rights: A Report Prepared for the New Zealand Education Development Foundation. New Zealand Education Development Foundation.
Francis Lieber (1859/2000). On Civil Liberty and Self-Government. Lawbook Exchange, Ltd..
A. J. M. Milne (1968). Freedom and Rights. New York, Humanities P..
Thomas C. Grey (1991). Civil Rights Vs. Civil Liberties: The Case of Discriminatory Verbal Harassment. Social Philosophy and Policy 8 (2):81.
Nabamita Dutta & Kwasi Osei-Yeboah, Foreign Direct Investment and Human Capital: The Role of Political and Civil Rights.
Michael C. Davis (ed.) (1995). Human Rights and Chinese Values: Legal, Philosophical, and Political Perspectives. Oxford University Press.
Added to index2010-08-31
Total downloads5 ( #498,920 of 1,792,850 )
Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #464,764 of 1,792,850 )
How can I increase my downloads?