Human rights

In 1776 Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. While the Founding Fathers were far from endorsing that concept in the way that it has come to be understood, those words articulated a commitment to basic “unalienable” rights such as life, liberty, and the right to own property. As the United States Constitution was shaped over time, guaranteed human rights were expanded to include minorities, including African Americans, women, Native Americans, and immigrant populations. By the late twentieth century, the idea that individuals had an inviolable human right to be treated with dignity was widely accepted in the United States and around the world.

Overview

A modern concept of human rights was articulated in 1941 in the Atlantic Charter, which resulted from a secret meeting between President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime MinisterWinston Churchill. In both the charter and his Four Freedoms speech, Roosevelt acknowledged the right of all people to live free from fear and want. Seven years later, when writing a draft for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the United Nations (UN), US ambassador Eleanor Roosevelt acknowledged that all humans have an equal and inalienable right to human dignity because it is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace. At his inauguration in 1977, President Jimmy Carter pledged that the United States would be committed to human rights. In contemporary terms, human rights have come to include not only political freedoms such as civil liberties and civil rights but also the right to employment, a basic standard of living, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and torture.

Throughout US history, the concept of human rights has generated considerable debate because it encompasses such controversial topics as abortion, hate speech, and rights of the accused. Historically, the US Supreme Court has upheld the precedence of First Amendment protections. Thus, cases involving hate speech have resulted in hot debates on the court, in the media, and with the public. Since Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the court has banned hate speech only when it is likely to result in violence.

Abortion has been one of the most controversial issues of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (1986), Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that a woman’s right to control her body was basic to human dignity. Conversely, Justice Anthony Kennedy assigned the right to human dignity to the unborn in Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), which upheld a ban on late-term abortions.

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriating Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, better known as the USA PATRIOT Act. The George W. Bush administration used the act to launch the War on Terror, which led to activities ranging from warrantless searches on US citizens to “enhanced interrogation” of suspected terrorists held at the United States military detainment facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948, the concept of human rights has continued to take center stage around the world. Political rights are still being abused in countries such as China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran, and groups such as the Kurds and the Palestinians continue to fight to maintain their historical identities. Tens of millions of lives have been lost to genocide in countries such as Rwanda, Sudan, and Bosnia. In the poorest countries, people still lack the ability to maintain a basic standard of living, often needing access to healthy food, untainted water, proper sanitation, and health care. Even in the most developed countries, individuals continue to struggle with discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation.

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