Who Qualifies for Rights?

Who Qualifies for Rights? PDF Author: Judith Lynn Failer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501721437
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
When does a person become disqualified for some or all of the rights associated with full citizenship? Who does qualify for rights? When mental health workers took Joyce Brown from her "home" on a New York City sidewalk and hospitalized her against her will, she defended herself by asserting her rights: to live where she wanted, to speak to the press to deride the city's policy, and to refuse unwanted psychiatric treatment. In theory, as a United States citizen, Brown possessed rights protecting her from governmental intrusion into her personal life. In practice, those rights were curtailed at the time of her civil commitment.Using the case of Joyce Brown as an example, Judith Lynn Failer explores the theoretical, legal, and practical justifications for limiting the rights of people who are involuntarily hospitalized. By looking at the reasons why law and theory say that some people diagnosed with mental illnesses no longer qualify for the full complement of constitutional rights, the author pieces together basic assumptions about who does, and who should, qualify for rights. Failer's analysis is motivated by her concern that people facing involuntary hospitalization stand to lose the most effective means they have of protecting themselves from abuse—their rights. She concludes that there is insufficient guidance for deciding who qualifies for regular rights and full citizenship. Finally, the author calls for the use of flexible standards to determine who should and who does qualify for rights.

Who Qualifies for Rights?

Who Qualifies for Rights? PDF Author: Judith Lynn Failer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501721437
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
When does a person become disqualified for some or all of the rights associated with full citizenship? Who does qualify for rights? When mental health workers took Joyce Brown from her "home" on a New York City sidewalk and hospitalized her against her will, she defended herself by asserting her rights: to live where she wanted, to speak to the press to deride the city's policy, and to refuse unwanted psychiatric treatment. In theory, as a United States citizen, Brown possessed rights protecting her from governmental intrusion into her personal life. In practice, those rights were curtailed at the time of her civil commitment.Using the case of Joyce Brown as an example, Judith Lynn Failer explores the theoretical, legal, and practical justifications for limiting the rights of people who are involuntarily hospitalized. By looking at the reasons why law and theory say that some people diagnosed with mental illnesses no longer qualify for the full complement of constitutional rights, the author pieces together basic assumptions about who does, and who should, qualify for rights. Failer's analysis is motivated by her concern that people facing involuntary hospitalization stand to lose the most effective means they have of protecting themselves from abuse—their rights. She concludes that there is insufficient guidance for deciding who qualifies for regular rights and full citizenship. Finally, the author calls for the use of flexible standards to determine who should and who does qualify for rights.

Citizenship as Foundation of Rights

Citizenship as Foundation of Rights PDF Author: Richard Sobel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107128293
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Citizenship as Foundation of Rights explains what it means to have citizen rights and how national identification requirements undermine them.

The Right to Have Rights

The Right to Have Rights PDF Author: Stephanie DeGooyer
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784787523
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Sixty years ago, the political theorist Hannah Arendt, an exiled Jew deprived of her German citizenship, observed that before people can enjoy any of the "inalienable" Rights of Man-before there can be any specific rights to education, work, voting, and so on-there must first be such a thing as "the right to have rights". The concept received little attention at the time, but in our age of mass deportations, Muslim bans, refugee crises, and extra-state war, the phrase has become the centre of a crucial and lively debate. Here five leading thinkers from varied disciplines-including history, law, politics, and literary studies-discuss the critical basis of rights and the meaning of radical democratic politics today.

The Five Rights of the Individual

The Five Rights of the Individual PDF Author: Philip Schuyler
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1469782030
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
The US government makes 350 pages of new laws each day, including directives of policy that limit what an individual may do at home alone or with consenting adults. Such laws are intended to make people safer, healthier, or more productive, but they often violate the Five Rights because they sacrifice personal choices to some presumed greater good. Directives of policy may include laws that violate the rights to privacy or free speech; laws restricting abortion or physician-assisted suicide; restrictions on gun rights; prohibitions on unhealthy foods, cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs; laws that discriminate against gays; and laws that violate property rights. Drug prohibition laws have been the most damaging. Over the past 40 years, the US population grew 50 percent while its prison population grew 1,000 percent, due mostly to antidrug laws. There are now two million Americans in jail, half of whom didnt harm, coerce, or defraud anyone. The land of the free has one twentieth of the worlds population and one fifth of its prison population. Our incarceration rate is seven times that of European countries. No democracy has ever had such a large percentage of its people behind bars. Legalization of marijuana and decriminalization of other drugs would free hundreds of thousands of individuals, end prison overcrowding, and save billions of dollars now spent trying to enforce unenforceable laws. There would be less need for spying, wiretapping, and breaking down doors. Americans could stop thinking of the police as the enemy and vice-versa, permitting a renewal of respect for the Five Rights.

Rights from Wrongs

Rights from Wrongs PDF Author: Alan M. Dershowitz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780465017133
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
A noted legal scholar examines the source of human rights, arguing that rights are the result of particular experiences with injustice and looking at the implications in terms of the right to privacy, voting rights, and other rights.

Legal Rights

Legal Rights PDF Author: Pavlos Eleftheriadis
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191562793
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
How can there be rights in law? We learn from moral philosophy that rights protect persons in a special way because they have peremptory force. But how can this aspect of practical reason be captured by the law? For many leading legal philosophers the legal order is constructed on the foundations of factual sources and with materials provided by technical argument. For this 'legal positivist' school of jurisprudence, the law endorses rights by some official act suitably communicated. But how can any such legal enactment recreate the proper force of rights? Rights take their meaning and importance from moral reflection, which only expresses itself in practical reasoning. This puzzle about rights invites a reconsideration of the nature and methods of legal doctrine and of jurisprudence itself. Legal Rights argues that the theory of law and legal concepts is a project of moral and political philosophy, the best account of which is to be found in the social contract tradition. It outlines an argument according to which legal rights can be justified before equal citizens under the constraints of public reason. The place of rights in law is explained by the unique position of law as an essential component of the civil condition and a necessary condition for freedom.

The Human Rights of Non-citizens

The Human Rights of Non-citizens PDF Author: David Weissbrodt
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191563277
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Non-citizens include asylum seekers, rejected asylum seekers, immigrants, non-immigrants, migrant workers, refugees, stateless persons, and trafficked persons. This book argues that regardless of their citizenship status, non-citizens should, by virtue of their essential humanity, enjoy all human rights unless exceptional distinctions serve a legitimate State objective and are proportional to the achievement of that objective. Non-citizens should have freedom from arbitrary arrest, arbitrary killing, child labour, forced labour, inhuman treatment, invasions of privacy, refoulement, slavery, unfair trial, and violations of humanitarian law. Additionally, non-citizens should have the right to consular protection; equality; freedom of religion and belief; labour rights (for example, as to collective bargaining, workers' compensation, healthy and safe working conditions, etc.); the right to marry; peaceful association and assembly; protection as minors; social, cultural, and economic rights. There is a large gap, however, between the rights that international human rights law guarantee to non-citizens and the realities they face. In many countries, non-citizens are confronted with institutional and endemic discrimination and suffering. The situation has worsened since 11 September 2001, as several governments have detained or otherwise violated the rights of non-citizens in response to fears of terrorism. This book attempts to understand and respond to the challenges of international human rights law guarantees for non-citizens human rights.

The Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights PDF Author: Carol Berkin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476743819
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
“Narrative, celebratory history at its purest” (Publishers Weekly)—the real story of how the Bill of Rights came to be: a vivid account of political strategy, big egos, and the partisan interests that set the terms of the ongoing contest between the federal government and the states. Those who argue that the Bill of Rights reflects the founding fathers’ “original intent” are wrong. The Bill of Rights was actually a brilliant political act executed by James Madison to preserve the Constitution, the federal government, and the latter’s authority over the states. In the skilled hands of award-winning historian Carol Berkin, the story of the founders’ fight over the Bill of Rights comes alive in a drama full of partisanship, clashing egos, and cunning manipulation. In 1789, the nation faced a great divide around a question still unanswered today: should broad power and authority reside in the federal government or should it reside in state governments? The Bill of Rights, from protecting religious freedom to the people’s right to bear arms, was a political ploy first and a matter of principle second. The truth of how and why Madison came to devise this plan, the debates it caused in the Congress, and its ultimate success is more engrossing than any of the myths that shroud our national beginnings. The debate over the Bill of Rights still continues through many Supreme Court decisions. By pulling back the curtain on the short-sighted and self-interested intentions of the founding fathers, Berkin reveals the anxiety many felt that the new federal government might not survive—and shows that the true “original intent” of the Bill of Rights was simply to oppose the Antifederalists who hoped to diminish the government’s powers. This book is “a highly readable American history lesson that provides a deeper understanding of the Bill of Rights, the fears that generated it, and the miracle of the amendments” (Kirkus Reviews).

I Know My Rights

I Know My Rights PDF Author: Heddrick McBride
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 25

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Book Description
I Know My Rights: Bill of Rights is a colorful book that will inform readers about the rights that they are guaranteed under the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Being a productive and responsible citizen requires having knowledge of the law. This is a book that the entire family will enjoy.

The Meanings of Rights

The Meanings of Rights PDF Author: Costas Douzinas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107027853
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
Questioning some of the repetitive and narrow theoretical writings on rights, a group of leading intellectuals examine human rights from philosophical, theological, historical, literary and political perspectives.