I didn’t want to hijack this thread about rights in the U.S.But I’m wondering how other countries define or describe rights in general. Not particular rights, but the general concept of rights, and where they come from.
LoL, talk about a cultural disjoint…
I don’t even know where to start to answer this; rights just are rights. They’re not only a good idea; they’re he law. I don’t think there’s any need to have a source for them; if they’re good for the people, they’re good for the people. Anything more than that is for moral philosophers and doesn’t really have any meaning in the world we live in. People aren’t equal because some external force dictates it, they just are. As for why… who gives a shit; you’re free to argue and philosophize all you want, we’re still going to treat people equally.
Except no culture in the world does: There’s all kinds of exceptions, from mental impairment to age (supposedly the same thing) to criminal history to gender. Without some over-arching theory, how do you figure out which exceptions make sense and which don’t?
And I shouldn’t have to add this: If you’re going to tell us what it’s like in your country, please tell us your country’s name.
Looking at two of the more famous declarations of rights, the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the post-Word War II Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both documents simply assert that certain rights are natural and inalienable and that all persons inherently have them.
Which, when you get right down to it, isn’t really that different from the American Declaration of Independence. “Self-evident” to whom? Presumably not to the King or to the Tories. “Endowed by their Creator”–Did Someone speak to Thomas Jefferson from a burning bush? This is not necessarily to disagree with any of these documents; just pointing out that all of them, whether grounded in some sort of theism or Deism or not, ultimately rest on a foundation of asserting things.
Here is a kind of funny clip from George Carlin on “rights”. Filmed just before his death, actually.
Warning: Naughty language. I mean, hey, it’s Carlin!
I’ve spoiler coded the link for those who don’t want to accidentally open it.
Yup. And this is important : even if their own country or state or culture denies they do. We French, as always, know best 
(well, knew, if we are to go by recent events…)
All right, serious answer : the rights were proclaimed and backed by the National Assembly and thus, by extension, by the country itself. So it’s a societal consensus and contract of sorts - i.e. “let’s all agree we have these rights because having them would be nice for once, and go from there”.
Many countries have similar rights found in the U.S. They do vary from country to country – especialy the court systems.
What does make the U.S. rights different is that they’re embedded into a written constitution that is very difficult to change. One law professor was telling me about a street performer challenging a new city ordinance based upon the street performer’s First Amendment rights. In other countries, the street performer might have rights based upon cultural issues, or that the local ordinance fails to follow national law. However, there are very few countries where it would be common for a street performer to challenge a law based upon the actual organic law of the state itself.
In many countries, like Great Britain, rights are unwritten, but are part of the political culture. However, their legislature can easily change them and modify them. Other countries have rights embedded in their constitutions, but their constitutions can be more easily amended.
For countries that follow the Western democratic traditions, most guarantee some right of freedom of speech although most countries ban extreme hate speech (in the U.S., this is usually protected by the U.S. Constitution). Most guarantee the right to defense at court trials, and the right to know the law that you’re being charged with, and that that law is not extremely vague.
Most guarantee some form of religious freedom although the actual technique is quite different from the U.S. which takes a mainly hands off approach. In England, there’s an official church. In Italy and Spain, the Catholic church has special privileges. In France, freedom of religion also means freedom from religion, and religious institutions and expression are regulated in ways that would not be permitted in the U.S.
Most guarantee the right to hold property and just compensation for property that is seized for state purposes.
Then, there are rights guaranteed by governments that don’t exist in the U.S. Many European countries are farther ahead on non-political rights than in the U.S. This includes such things as Gay/Lesbian issues, health issues, and poverty issues.
One thing I know that shocked me when I was looking something up years ago was the ability of some Western nations to ban book sales. I was looking up Hitler’s Mein Kampf. And I was shocked to find it banned in some Western nations.
So the ability to modify certain rights for reasons is often quite interesting
Nowadays, I believe many countries have followed the American example and have an explicit written list of rights that are codified into law. So rights originate from the same source as sovereignty, which in most cases is the will of the people. If the majority of people in a country decide they have a right, then they create such a right.
To quote the Finnish constitution(pdf)
chapter 2, section 6, “No one shall, without an acceptable reason, be treated differently from other persons on the ground of sex, age, origin, language, religion, conviction, opinion, health, disability or other reason that concerns his or her person.” Equality, not just a good idea; it’s the law.
and on chapter 2, section 7 on rights “Everyone has the right to life, personal liberty, integrity and security. No one shall be sentenced to death, tortured or otherwise treated in a manner violating human dignity. The personal integrity of the individual shall not be violated, nor shall anyone be deprived of liberty arbitrarily or without a reason prescribed by an Act.” So, any exceptions are based on laws. Everyone is assumed to be equal, unless a law specifically states otherwise.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedomsalso has a statement about Equality:
There is, of course, a limitations clause in the CCRF that allows for age-based regulation such as publication bans on the names of juvenile criminals, or upholding the hate speech laws, etc.
As a bit of an aside, in reading the Prop 8 threads it seems to me that the US interpretation is that any group explicitly mentioned is protected by the Constitution but non mentioned groups aren’t guaranteed such protection, while in the Canadian (and Finnish, it seems!) versions, the law is written such that it is clear that all groups are equal, even though some are specifically mentioned in the text. It’s an interesting difference reflecting when and in what context these documents were written: 1787 (US) and 1982 (Canada) were very different times indeed.
Chinese generally have always had a totalitarian feudal type philosphy. The the rights of the individual are lessor than that of who has the power. The father ruled the family, the Clan head ruled the father, nobles ruled the Clans, the Emperor ruled the nobles. Translates to modern China, and if a redevelopment project is deemed “good” then it happens and is not tied up in court for years of due process.
In Canada, our rights are enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is part of our Constitution.
Equality rights are section 15:
Other sections cover democratic rights, the functioning of Parliament and legislatures, language rights, and legal rights (habeas corpus and so forth).
As a political compromise with the provinces and a nod to the British tradition of parliamentary (as opposed to constitutional) supremacy, some of the rights – including the equality rights – can be overridden by Parliament or a provincial legislature by invoking Section 33 of the Charter, also known as the Notwithstanding Clause. However, this is very rarely used – only Quebec has successfully used it, and no longer does; the federal Parliament has never attempted it – and is such a political hot potato that it might never be used again. At any rate, its use is very circumscribed, it must be renewed every 5 years (the maximum length of a Parliament), and it cannot override rights such as voting rights.
The dominant school of constitutional interpretation in Canada is the living tree doctrine, which says that “a constitution is organic and must be read in a broad and progressive manner so as to adapt it to the changing times.”
There are also rights provided by statute, such as the Canadian Human Rights Act and the provincial Human Rights Acts. Quebec treats its Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms as quasi-constitutional; section 52 says that no provision of any other act passed by the Quebec National Assembly may derogate from sections 1 to 38, unless such act expressly states that it applies despite the charter.
But I suspect there is more to it than that. Like the US, is it not just a matter of having a right to do X unless Congress makes a law against doing X.? For certain values of X, Congress “shall make no law…”. That’s what makes it a “right” in the first place.
Thank you for proving my point: Without a philosophy, how do you decide what’s an acceptable reason?
How do you know which of those laws to pass?
The traditional concept in England and Wales was the Common Law based upon prohibitions, anything which was expressly not prohibited was allowed. Sio there was no law allowing freedom of speech, all speech was allowed unless it was against the law somehow. HAs changed a bit in England and Wales since 1998 and the passage of the Human Rights Act.
Most juridictions that have been based upon the common law system which have incorporated a written bill of rights have still followed the above idea to a large extent.
One of the problems with the American system is that its protection of rights is rather limited and it is illdefined whose rights are protected and who is encumbered by the same; thats based upon case law. In addition since 1789, the concept of rights has changed and expanded so much so that the United States constitutions fairly out of date in that respect; I really doubt if in any common law country a draft constitution which is identical to the US constitution would pass muster.
Of course the US is unique in that its state constitutions tend to protect individual fundamental rights to a far greater extent that the Federal one, in most countries, the Federal Constitution is it.
we don’t have abill of rights or any other such nonsense. The problem with a bill is like the bible, everyone reads it differently and in the end people forget what they are talking about.
Common law works pretty well, if something is not legislated against then it is OK.
How do you decide what is acceptable? That is what our elected representatives do and if we don’t like them we chuck 'em out next time.
Laws are judged as being best for the greater good in most cases.
Also we have legislation that covers discrimination etc.
Without a specific example it is hard to answer but aussies are not that fussed as we have a pretty good level of freedom here. When we see something that we don’t like we accept it or lobby to get it changed, look at gun parties, motorcyle groups, etc etc.
The system of rights applying in most European countries is based on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The signatories of this treaty form the Council of Europe. Some countries such as the UK have incorporated the Convention into their national laws and thus a court can apply the principles directly. A person living in a Council of Europe country may appeal a case involving human rights to the European Court of Human Rights if all means of redress have been exhausted at the national level.
As well as the Convention, there are a number of additional protocols to which some countries are signatories. For instance the sixth protocol abolishes the death penalty in peacetime, and the thirteenth protocol abolishes the death penalty in time of war.
All members of the European Union are members of the Council of Europe. More recently the European Charter has incorporated human rights into EU law. The way this interacts with the ECHR isn’t yet fully worked out.